


Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea

by crinklefries



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Alternate Universe - Priests, Alternate Universe - Religious, Dream Sex, Eerie and Chilling Imagery, Gothic, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Is Thor losing his mind or falling in love?, M/M, Mentions of Death, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Priest Thor, Religious Guilt, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Religious Irreverency, Sea Creature Loki, Seaside, Spiritual, Thorki Big Bang 2019, Unsettling, dark fairytales & myths, gothic aesthetic, things that go bump in the night - Freeform, this is weird and chilling and romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-20
Updated: 2019-11-20
Packaged: 2021-02-16 07:29:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 28,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21504148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: The village was birthed by the Gods, some say. Others say it is the very idea of myth that gave it its existence. Perhaps neither are right and the village was crafted from the Sea herself.Whatever the truth, the fact is that no one can quite remember its beginning and surely, no one will write so much about its end.It is a quiet, peaceful village, Asgardia.Nothing ever goes wrong there.
Relationships: Loki/Thor
Comments: 38
Kudos: 141
Collections: Thorki Big Bang 2019





	1. I.

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to my submission for the Thorki Big Band 2019! This fic is inspired by [River Lea by Adele](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxRQlvmH-Uk) and is an idea that I've carried around with me for over a year now. It is genuinely so weird and very aesthetic and unlike anything I've written before. 
> 
> Testimonials include: "I cannot BELIEVE the first thorki fic I read is fucking THOR THE PRIEST AND LOKI THE SEA MONSTER and I have CHILLS" and "this is some Guillermo del Toro shit here I love it."
> 
> Speaking of, thank you DEEPLY to [deisderium](https://twitter.com/deisderium) for being my ever enthusiastic and ever willing beta and to [Grace](https://twitter.com/gracelesso) for reading through this nonsense and correcting all of the details of Catholicism and the British countryside I got terribly wrong. This fic is no longer set in the British countryside, which is for the best, so thanks to Grace for helping me realize that!!
> 
> Thank you ALSO to [Ariel](https://twitter.com/overlysalted_) for being literally the #1 fan and cheerleader of this fic even when I threatened to delete it on a weekly basis. And, of course, thank you to the mods of the [Thorki Big Bang](https://twitter.com/thorkibigbang) for making the whole shebang happen!!
> 
> FINALLY thank you to [darkellaine](https://twitter.com/Darkellaine) my INCREDIBLE artist. Your artwork takes this fic to the next fucking level and I am just. Thrilled. I am thrilled!!!!!
> 
>  **Please be advised this fic contains religious themes and, more importantly, religious irreverence.** Proceed only if those themes don't offend you!
> 
> Anyway THANKS 4 EVERYONE'S SUPPORT, PLEASE ENJOY FIC.

  
*

_no, i can’t go back, but the reeds are growing out of my fingertips_   
_i can’t go back to the river;_   
_but it’s in my roots, it’s in my veins_   
_it’s in my blood and i stain_

*

**Prologue.**

The Ifing Sea never freezes. It is not a cold body of water, nor a warm one, in the same way that it is both a cold body and a warm one at the same time. In the summers, the Ifing abuts the edges of the land gently, a warm breeze skimming across the glass surface of the dark water on nights that are not so hot as they are humid, suffocating. During the winter, the Sea grows colder and looks it too—the warm blues of the summer waters fading to something closer to steel grey. If the water is not cold, then it at least looks it. A bitter wind wipes away the humidity and what is left is a lake steaming, but not frozen.

The Sea spreads out vast and endless, to the far reaches of the landscape, until it grows narrower and narrower, squeezing in between the steep-sided cliffs forming a fjord. It licks the land, seeping into rocks and sand, the cool of the water dampening the moist soil from which trees climb.

Most days, the Ifing Sea sits still and calm, a blue, or grey, or dark black pool of water, reflecting the land back into the sky.

Every so often, however, when the clouds shift or the moon’s light skims the surface, the water ripples, as though the Sea itself is heaving.

Or, perhaps, something underneath.

  
A mile from the rocky shore lies a small village named Asgardia. It is an old village, not so big and not so very small; neither memorable, nor wholly forgettable. It exists something like a dream, a memory when the cloud shifts just so or the ripple of a cold, dark body of water. Asgardia is nearly as old as the Ifing Sea itself, although, of course, the annals of history have written only a small portion of its story.

The village was birthed from the Gods, some say. Others say it is the very idea of myth that gave it its existence. Perhaps neither are right and the village was crafted from the Sea herself.

Whatever the truth, the fact is that no one can quite remember its beginning and, surely, no one will write so much about its end.

It is a village of stone buildings and thatched rooftops. At night, the wind whistles through the cracks in the walls and when it rains, the water makes the cobblestone paths slick and muddy.

It is a quiet, peaceful village, Asgardia.

Nothing ever goes wrong there.

  
It’s the kind of night that is cold not because the temperature is low or the wind is bitter, but because there is a wet chill hanging in the air, the kind that creeps under your clothes and sinks through to the very bone of you. The fog rolls through the village, thick and white, smothering thatched roofs and curved paths of gravel. It clings to the top of pale blades of grass and spreads across the ink black surface of the Sea. The water, underneath, is eerily still, like a breath held close. Above it, grey clouds shift.

As the boy’s ball rolls down the gentle slope of the hill, the moon creeps out from behind, bathing him, and the Sea, in just a sliver of illuminated light.

  
He’s twelve years old, small for his age, with copper hair and grey eyes that catch in the moonlight. He has a name, old, taken from myth, but that is neither here nor there. Who he is is not what is important.

What is important is that he is walking home when his ball slips out of his hand and rolls down the hill.

The boy curses lightly to himself and looks behind him, worriedly. The fog casts a dense film between the hill and the village. He doesn’t really have the time to think. Instead, he runs down the hill, shoes sinking into soft grass, as he follows the ball.

  
The boy catches the ball at the edge of the water, just as it’s about to float away to sea. He curses again as his fingers close around it, the water cold against his skin. The movement is small, but not inconsequential. A ripple begins where the water touches the ball and spreads down, spirals of friction loosening into the sea beyond.

“Aha,” he breathes out loud and lifts the ball out to dry against his shirt.

Satisfied, the boy turns on his heels to make his way back up the hill.

He has only taken two steps when he feels the air grow colder around him—not chill, or even wet, but _cold_. He tries to take a breath and it stutters in his lungs, freezing there. He feels his skin prickling and when he looks down, it looks as though ice is spreading across his arms.

Frowning, feeling something at his back, the boy swallows.

He turns.

  
The Sea rises, growing larger and larger, until it blots out what is left of the moon. It is an ice blue, the color of the winter sky or of the ocean, if the ocean could freeze.

The boy swallows a scream, the sound muffled into the fog.

Ultimately, what he sees is not what takes him, but the reflection of it in the water.

The boys is swallowed by the Sea.

The Sea leaves not a trace behind.

*

When the villagers search in the morning, they will find a small, red ball resting on the gravel of dry land at the bottom of the hill, mere inches away from the water.

Ask though they might, the waters of the Ifing Sea share no secrets and tell no stories. The fog retreats and the villagers look, but the water remains calm and dark, not a single ripple to be found.

The boy is never seen again.

*

**one.**

He jars awake in the middle of the night, heart racing. There’s the low sound of the sea, the water rustling somewhere far beyond his window. There’s the wind, cool and low, nestling into every corner of his cottage. It finds the space between wooden slats and the nooks between boards, the air filling in the cracks like a cold breath filling a lung. The cold creeps up from the floor, slides up the edge of the bed, and digs in under his covers. He runs hot on the best day, but it’s sinking into his skin now, the chill heavy on his bones. It’s not that. It’s not even the moon, high in the sky, a bright, unforgiving orb hanging in the middle of dark ink.

Thor presses a hand to his chest, feels the rapid pulse of his heart beneath his palm. He presses down, once, and feels the spike in heartbeat, the pressure in his ears. He can hear his breath rattle around in his lungs. It’s cold and startled at the same time. On a night like this, it can always be both.

But no, it’s not that either.

It takes him a moment to place it.

It’s nothing around him at all.

Thor turns on his side and looks out through the open window. Somewhere down the stone path, the rock turns to grass and the grass turns to open water. The thought calms him and terrifies him in the same breath. He feels goosebumps erupt across his skin.

_He remembers the feel of the Sea filling his lungs. He had stood on the edge of a cliff and looked down into the gaping chasm of a blue so deep it hurt to see. It had seeped into his eyes, through his nostrils and ears. He had swallowed it until his insides had turned salty with shards of ice. He had fallen to his knees, fingers clutched to his throat, trying desperately to take a breath. His nails had turned to talons._

_Thor had looked to the sky and found it disappeared. Then he had looked to the Sea and found it had turned black, the kind of black so pure it nearly blinds you._

_Thor had opened his mouth—wider, wider, _wider_ —and he had screamed, but all that had come out was water. _

_The water had gathered at his feet and when he looked back up, there was nothing left to see._

_He had frozen to ice and in front of him, looming like a cliff’s face above him, was—_

This is what wakes him—not a noise or a feeling or the lack of both, but a nightmare.

*

Thor pulls himself up in bed, the sheets pooled at his waist. The cool air slides across his bare chest, chilling skin that is otherwise hot. Thor’s body runs like it’s perpetually summer, but outside, Asgardia falls closer into winter. A few months more and frost will cover every window pane. Thor will have to consider a heater then, but for now his hot blood works.

Or, usually it does. Tonight, he runs a hand through his long, golden hair and realizes he’s not only chilled, but cold, to the bone of him. He shakes as he reaches over to his bedside table, his large hand fitting easily around the glass of water. He raises it to his mouth and swallows it in a few gulps, easily. It’s only when he puts it back down that he realizes his teeth are chattering.

It doesn’t take long for him to decide. There is only ever one person who is able to calm him from his night terrors. He picks up his phone, dials, and waits.

She picks up on the second ring.

“Thor?” Frigga asks. She sounds far less tired than he would expect his mother to at—he squints at the time on his phone—three in the morning. “Is there something the matter?”

How is Thor to explain that he feels like a nightmare is crawling over his skin? His mother claims to be a witch, but what do witches know of catching bad dreams? Anyway, magic isn’t real and neither are witches. All of it is pure nonsense and Thor just has to use his words.

“Ma,” he says, his voice gravel.

It takes him a minute to find the words he wants to ask his mother at 3:00 am. Even then, he’s not sure.

“How long have I had nightmares?”

Frigga is quiet for a moment, contemplating. “Did you have a nightmare, sweetheart?”

Thor swallows.

“Yeah.”

“They were common,” Frigga says. “When you were growing up. We would find you screaming in your sleep every so often.”

Thor picks at a stray thread on his comforter.

“Did I say why? What was I dreaming?”

“You don’t remember?” Frigga asks.

“No.”

“Mm,” Frigga says. Then, “You never told us. Your father asked. I asked. You never could remember.”

Thor tilts his head back against the headboard. If he closes his eyes, he can almost catch snatches of his nightmare now. Almost, but not quite. It slides away from him quickly, like sand through an hourglass.

Every time he thinks he finds the shape of it, it dissipates into thin air. He remembers the color blue. He thinks he can taste salt on his tongue.

“What do you think it means?” Thor asks. He hasn’t been scared in a long time, but this—there’s something here that catches his breath in his lungs. His chest feels tight in a way that he can’t loosen.

“Dreams can be a lot of things, sweetheart,” Frigga says. “A wisp of a memory. An echo of another life. Magic is fickle that way. It shows itself to us in ways that we aren’t fully equipped to understand.”

“Magic isn’t real, Ma,” Thor says and his voice sounds more stable now. This one thing always helps bring him back down from the clouds. “Dreams are just—our subconscious processing external stimuli.”

“Okay,” Frigga says and, to Thor’s annoyance, even sounds amused. “So what is your subconscious saying about your external stimuli, my love?”

“I don’t know,” Thor says, annoyed. He blinks as he stares at the white of his ceiling. “If I knew, I wouldn’t have called.”

“Well you don’t want answers from me,” Frigga says. “So why did you call?”

Thor swallows and feels bad.

“I just wanted...to hear your voice,” he says. Of his entire family, they’re the only two left now. If Thor holds onto that a little tighter than he should, then so be it.

“I’m here,” Frigga says, gently this time. “Is it helping?”

“A little. It would help more if you believed in a higher power.”

“I do believe in a higher power, Thor,” Frigga says. “It’s just not the one you believe in.”

That makes Thor frown. He doesn’t wear his faith close to his chest—far from it. He wishes he could reach Frigga with it. He’s grateful that she has faith of her own—some faith is better than no faith—but he wishes it was one that was less based in fantasy. Magic wasn’t real. God was.

Thor closes his eyes and whispers a prayer to himself. When he finishes, there’s a yawn stretching his mouth.

“Now there, that sounds better,” Frigga says. “Tomorrow’s Sunday. You have a service, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Thor says and yawns again. Suddenly, he’s overcome with how tired he feels, the sluggishness settling into his bones. “Have to finish my sermon before Mass.”

“Then you should get back to sleep,” Frigga says soothingly. “Call me after you’ve had your word with the Almighty, won’t you?”

“Mother,” Thor complains and he hears Frigga’s gentle laughter over the line. His mother might be an incorrigible heathen who, for some reason, thinks she’s a witch, but she’s still the best person he knows. She is the only comfort he has left to him.

“I love you, Thor,” Frigga says.

“Love you too,” Thor replies and hangs up.

He puts the phone on the nightstand and forces himself to slip back under the covers. He turns on his side, looking out the window. Not for the first time, he wishes he weren’t so alone. He feels the ache just under his ribs, a hollow part to him he can never quite pray away. God is there and God is good, but he’s still alone in his bed far into the night.

Eventually his heart slows and the ache subsides.

His breathing evens out, the Sea whispering against his ears.

*

When he wakes up, it’s to the faint rays of morning light seeping in across the open windowsill. The air is cool, the movement in it soft, as though it had rained in the night without Thor’s notice. The sounds outside rustle, breaking the languid, peaceful spell that settles over his cottage on Sundays, just before the village wakes up.

Thor lets out a brief sigh and stretches, his whole body contorting as he tries to ease the aches that have settled into his muscles. It is either the sign of old age or the oncoming winter. Thor is in his late thirties, crawling toward forty, so the excuse must be in the climate. He goes running most mornings anyway. The body requires care and nourishment as much as the spirit does.

He sits up and touches his head. There’s a lingering headache there, as though he’s taken a knock to his head or there’s the lingering effects of a night well spent. He hasn’t been to the local pub in some time, though, and he doesn’t remember knocking his head against anything. His mouth is dry as sandpaper, his skin prickling. He thinks he might have had a bad dream, but those he can never remember.

Thor takes what’s left of his glass of water and drains it. Then, checking the time—there’s still hours left before service—he bodily hauls himself from bed, shucks off his sweatpants, and goes to take a shower.

  
There’s something to be said about hot showers on cool autumn days. The water slides against his chilled skin, heating him over inch by inch. The shampoo runs into eyes he closes. He works up a lather everywhere and stands in the spray, letting the previous day’s dirt and the stale air run off of him.

When he was younger, he would use the morning to touch himself. Now, he has more things on his mind than bodily pleasure. Anyway, the school of thought there is even self pleasure is a breach of his vows and although Thor isn’t entirely clear he believes that, he’s usually too tired to explore where he falls on the issue. He tilts his head back and lets his mind buzz out while the hot water slowly runs cool.

Around him, a steam gathers.

  
Thor leads services twice a week, but Sunday Mass is his favorite. He saves up his best material for Sunday prayer, thoughts he’s jotted down through the week, passages of the Bible he’s marked as resonating at odd hours. Most of the week he spends taking care of the small church and meeting with his parishioners. He makes his round through the parish. He visits the sick and the elderly. He helps distribute food to the poor. On Tuesdays, he takes the bus three hours away to visit the bishop and pick up supplies for the week. On Thursday nights, he and Frigga have a weekly phone date. Thor is a priest, he isn’t a leper.

It passes the time quickly enough, but what he likes—what he really treasures—are the moments of peace in between his schedule. Sometimes, he sits on the bench at the top of the hill and looks down at the cool blue of the sea. He has his Bible with him, often, or a notebook, or just his phone. His mind is engaged, usually, but every so often, he disconnects. He looks out at the water in front of him, takes a breath, and lets it out.

  
His sermon this week is on _faith_.

It’s a concept he hasn’t always believed in, but, then, he hasn’t always been so religiously inclined. People come to religion in different ways and Thor, he came by way of death. He swallows and reads over the selected passages of scripture and then over his notes once more.

_What is faith?_ Thor, asks. _If my faith is different from your faith, is it still faith? Do we have the right to disparage what another believes in? Is it not enough that their faith is their anchor and mine is my own? Is it still faith if you lose sight of the thing you believe in?_

It hits Thor in the chest, not in his heart, but in between his ribs. There’s a hollow space there that he can never quite fill. It grows, sometimes, a terrible, black death. Other times it shrinks, swallowed by the magnitude of the spirit he carries.

It has been this way for some time.

It has been this way ever since Odin died.

  
Thor folds the papers and slides them into his pocket. He slips into his clergy shirt and buttons it all the way up to his throat. He threads his black leather belt through the belt loops of his black pants and buckles the front. He fixes his collar, the white peeking out under black, making sure it’s fastened firmly against his throat. He finds his small wooden cross, hung at the end of a chain of wooden beads. He slides that over his head. Lastly, he pulls on his cassock.

It’s rather a lot to wear and in the summers he’ll try to forego the cassock entirely. But in the crisp, cold September air, it’s exactly the warmth he needs to shield him from the wind.

Thor looks at the only mirror he keeps in the cottage—it’s a full length one at the end of his room.

He brushes his golden hair back. He considers tying it into a ponytail, but doesn’t.

Finally, he puts on his glasses.

He’s the youngest priest Asgardia has ever welcomed. After Father Tyr had fallen ill, the bishop had sent Thor to the village. The decision had been controversial to say the least, but Thor had made short work of winning over his parish. It could have been his charming, easy way of speaking. It could have been how thoughtful his comments were, how kind and forgiving he seemed. It could have just been his smile. He tucks his secrets close to his chest and keeps his judgements to himself; it could be this, too.

Whatever the reason for the trust, this has been Thor’s home and parish for two years now.

Frigga asks him to come home at least once a month, but Thor always refuses. It’s not that he thinks he’s making penance for his father’s sins—anything but. The truth is that Thor grew up in the noise and dirt of the city and it had suited him, until it hadn’t anymore.

Now he likes the quiet rhythm of the village, the gentle noises that wake him in the morning, and the breeze that calms him to sleep at night.

As a young man he had been so angry, but now—all of that is washed away by the Ifing Sea.

So he tells his mother _one day_ , and maybe he even means it. But for now, he doesn’t want to leave Asgardia; not yet. The quiet, sleepy village has become his home.

  
Thor gives himself a once over one last time and smiles at his reflection.

Then, pocketing his cell phone, he leaves his cottage for church.

*

**two.**

The church is a ten minute walk down the stone path that cuts through the middle of Asgardia. The path winds its way past the edges of the village and curves slowly up the grey and sometimes pale green countryside. The stretches of hillside roll gently alongside it, the slope not so steep as gradual, but angled slightly down anyway and then back up to a flat top, upon which the stone chapel resides like a crown. The little, grey church is made of stone older than the village itself, with steep, sloping roofs of worn slate and large, arched windows. The stone path leads up to a front door made of dark wood as thick as the width of a man’s palm. There’s a cross engraved into the middle of the door. It matches the stone cross at the tip of the roof, small and worn by the weather, but no less proud for it.

There are crows perched on the eaves of the roof, two of them, side by side, with space left between them for a third that isn’t there. Thor, two hours early for his own service, stands at the crest of the hill. He has his fingers curved around the wooden cross he wears at his throat, eyes arrested upon the sight of his church and his two visitors.

He knows crows have always been carriers of omens, harbingers of messages, both bad and good, from a world beyond their own. That is the myth, although Thor has never believed in myths himself. Still, he watches the crows and they watch him back. The air between them is cool, the morning chill still dense around him. Thor can feel it on his skin, the weight of the moment crawling under his clothing. He opens his mouth, as though to say something. He closes it, not knowing what he meant.

The crows watch him.

His gaze flits beyond the familiar stone, his heart skittering in his chest for reasons he could not explain. A hundred yards away from the church, there’s a small, open cemetery. Asgardia does not bury its dead. It follows its Catholic faith in everything but this. The living follow God and the dead are sent back to Him, on a burning barge on the Sea.

The first time Thor had seen it, he had stopped in his tracks, his hands raised to make the sign of the cross about himself. Instead, he had watched the pyre burn and float out to sea under a jet black sky littered with stars. He had felt something move in his chest then that had felt greater than faith. He had watched, arrested, and swallowed the sensation. When he had come to, his hand still hadn’t finished the cross. He had tucked it away, awed and overwhelmed.

Still, there are those of the old Faith and the old Faith requires the dead be returned to the earth. A handful of curved, moss-covered graves make up the Asgardia cemetery. The writing on the stones is so worn, Thor can trace the grooves and never read who lies underneath. They have returned, to the ground and to God, forgotten by those they left behind.

Thor stares listlessly at the graves. Then, as though someone has called his name, he startles. He looks back from the cemetery to the church, his nerves pulled taut.

On the eaves, the crows are still watching him.

One of them tilts its head and opens its beak, as though to speak. No sound comes from its mouth.

Chilled, Thor shakes his head, tucks his notepad closer to his chest, and goes inside.

  
Thor prepares for his service in the small room that serves as his office. He leaves the decoration mostly bare except for what Father Tyr had left behind for him—some books, a cross or two, general religious memorabilia. Thor doesn’t mind them, although they don’t fill him with any particular feeling either. He has one framed picture of him and Frigga on a shelf and an hourglass he had inherited from his uncle Mimir.

On his desk is a silver hammer that he uses as a glorified paperweight. There are Norse engravings along the side: _Whosoever holds the hammer, he be Worthy._ It was Odin’s most cherished possession. He hadn’t left it to Thor, even upon his death. Thor had stolen it, instead, when he was helping his mother go through his father’s things. Now it sits on his desk, a heavy reminder of what he will never be.

He opens the windows to his office and sits, his notepad and pen in front of him. The cool air drifts in through the window. Thor sighs through a subtle chill and picks up his pen.

He works on finishing his sermon in the undisturbed quiet until he starts hearing the voices of his parishioners outside.

  
“Faith,” Thor says, from the pulpit. “How do we come to faith?”

There’s a rustling from in front of him, the hushed quiet of the church punctuated by children dressed in their Sunday best trying their hardest not to fidget while holding onto their mother’s hands. The rows are filled with his parishioners, ten rows of quiet, cautious villagers with wide eyes and tired faces tilted up toward the front, like sunflowers to the sun.

“And once we find it,” Thor says, with a smile. “What do we do with it? Is it enough to say we believe—that we put ourselves into the hands of a power greater than us? Do we pick it up and put it into our back pockets, admire it once a week—sometimes twice—and put it back, forgotten? Or do we take it out and polish it? It’s easy to say we have faith—Faith with a capital F—and harder still to do something about it. I look out unto all of you and—”

Thor does look out at them, and he pauses. He knows his parish like the back of his hand or the drum of his own heart in his ear. He knows what it looks like when they are moved—he knows what it looks like when they are paying attention. Conversely, he knows what it looks like when they aren’t.

There is rustling this morning, but, to his surprise, it isn’t coming only from the children. The parents are fidgeting too—Mrs. Williams, whose eyes keep darting out the window, and Mr. Kirk, who can’t seem to stop drumming his fingers against his legs, and Leonard Davies, the village gardener, who is pulling at a string on his already threadbare Sunday jacket. Jord keeps touching the ends of her hair and Borr, the son of the oldest villager still living, isn’t pretending to pay attention at all.

The air, Thor notices belatedly, is tense. He can’t quite taste the undercurrent, but it’s there, now that he’s sensed it, an electric, frantic shock that slides over his skin and runs down his spine.

The parishioners gaze up at him with confusion and Thor realizes he’s been silent for too long. He shakes his head and tendrils of gold slide out of a bun he hastily pulled back before the service.

“Sorry, I look unto you all and I see a group of people come together under one Faith—with a capital F—but uncertain now that you have it.”

Thor hears the words echo loudly throughout the room and he wonders, distantly, if he isn’t projecting, just a little.

“It is okay to be scared,” Thor says, with a smile. For some reason, this is what piques everyone’s interest. At least, Borr suddenly looks up at him. “It is good to be scared by that which is most important.”

He sees it fall on deaf ears anyway; his words almost made it home, but skipped off the surface at the last moment instead. Wherever the villagers are today, it’s not here—with Thor, contemplating faith.

His smile falters. Mrs. Williams looks out the window again and this time Thor follows her line of vision. This, more than anything, makes the parishioners rustle louder.

“Is there something the matter?” Thor asks, once he’s returned his gaze back to the people in front of him. “I feel you are all somewhere else today.”

He’s met with silence that borders on unnerving. He feels it unsettle him. It unseats him.

“Honestly, what is the matter—” he starts to say, voice raised, when he sees her near the back of the room. Watery eyes rimmed in red, dressed in black lace, looking as though she’s two sheets to the wind at nine in the morning on a Sunday, Rindr looks more ghost than person.

Of course, he thinks. He was foolish to not suspect the villagers would be upset at the disappearance of her son.

“You are upset,” Thor says, softly. “About the loss of one of our sons.”

Suddenly, every eye is on him. Like a lightning bolt to his spine, Thor feels the energy in the room shift. What he had felt before had been barely constrained tension. Now, he feels it shake loose. Every eye looks forward at him, every parishioner leans forward. What Thor had interpreted to be nerves suddenly has a new word—panic, even—hysteria. He can almost taste it in the air between them.

Thor looks out at his villagers and each and every one looks back at him, eyes wide, an almost crazed fear laid bare on their faces.

“What happened was a tragedy,” Thor says, reasonably. He looks at Rindr. “Make no mistake. You are right to mourn. You are right to be cautious—and to wonder _why_. But remember, it is not our place to question God—”

Suddenly, Thor hears a keening sort of sound. He’s startled to a stop, the sound is so sharp and harsh. The sound continues, piercing through the dense air and causing nerves to spike, fraying at the ends. The entire front row covers their ears. A child in the middle of the room begins crying.

It takes them all a moment to realize what the sound is—or, who it is.

Thor, heart racing, looks up and Rindr is standing, her face pale, her hair nearly standing on end.

“This was not _God_ ,” she shrieks. “This was a _monster_. _A monster took my son!_ ”

  
Thor has never believed in monsters. He has never seen the purpose of it—even before he became what he is today, a man of God, a person of Faith. He does not believe in monsters and he does not believe in witches or magic or, above all, myths.

“There is no _monster_ ,” he insists.

The sermon has been ruined—the entire service cast off at the rails. Leonard Davies is the first to come to his senses and, puffing, he grasps Rindr by the arms and leads her out. The entire parish can hear her shrieks echo through the church even as her body leaves. Outside, through the open windows, they can hear the jagged, harsh, guttural cries, as though her grief and fear are breaking on rocks along with her body itself.

“We—we have suffered a tragedy,” Thor says, trying to carry on as though he hasn’t been shaken. “A terrible, senseless, great tragedy. But monsters are no more real than the fae or tales that go bump in the night. It is horrible, but what happened here is an _accident_ —”

“Then where is the body?” a voice suddenly calls out.

Thor skims the audience and finds Skadi, a tall, large woman with blond hair down half her back, standing.

“If there are no monsters, where is the child’s body?” Skadi demands. Her voice, trembling at first, grows stronger. “If this was a mere accident, _where is Vali_?”

Thor tries to regain some sense of decorum.

“Come now, Skadi,” he says. “The boy disappeared on the shores of the Sea. It is a large body of water—”

“Bodies float,” Skadi glares at him. “Bodies do not sink to the bottom and stay there.”

“Sometimes—” Thor tries to reason, but he’s interrupted again.

“It is not just the Sea,” Hermod, the local blacksmith, rises from his seat too. “We have all lived here our entire lives. Our fathers lived here before us and their fathers before them. We _know_ what a drowning looks like. We have dealt with drowning before and we will deal with it again.”

“This is no drowning,” Thomas Burrows-Thornton now speaks. Mr. Burrows-Thornton is an accountant who works in Asgardia half of the week and in Gladsheim the rest. Thor finds himself unaccountably rankled to hear this normally reasonable and rational man join with the throng. “There isn’t a child in this village who does not know how to swim. We all grew up swimming in the Sea.”

“You can _still drown_ ,” Thor says, his voice rising in frustration, “even if you know how to _swim_.”

“Do not be _foolish_ , Father,” Skadi says and she’s nearly shaking now—all six foot one inches of her. “This is no common occurrence. You feel the air around here—every villager has had visions of the Sea.”

“No,” Thor says in surprise. His heart suddenly hammers, pulse thundering up near his throat. “Dreams are not visions—”

“These are no dreams,” Hermod agrees, loudly. “These are cruel, cold _visions_ —of the water and what lives out there. All of us have seen it—the monster. _The creature_.”

“Oh for Heaven’s—” Thor starts, but Mr. Burrows-Thornton interrupts again.

“It is not the first time,” he says and looks Thor directly, squarely in the eye. Thor stops, mid-protest, overcome with an unshakeable chill. “Vali is not the first child the monster has taken, and he will not be the last. If you do not heed us, Father, we will lose our children, one by one, until all that’s left in Asgardia is you and the cemetery behind us.”

  
Thor isn’t able to keep the attention after that. It doesn’t matter how often he tries to reason with his parishioners or point to them unmovable, unassailable _facts_ , the panicked frisson weighs down the atmosphere, the spaces between him and the villagers taut with tension.

“Keep Faith,” Thor advises. “This is a test and we will not fail it.”

The villagers look disgruntled at that, but after the initial outbursts, it seems no one is willing to argue with the Father. They do not meet his eyes and Thor concludes the service with a heavy heart. His body feels heavy too, as though he’s dragging it against the ground. The parishioners begin leaving the church quickly, in groups, and he feels, distantly, as though he’s failed.

_Help me bring this village back from the edge_ , Thor closes his eyes and prays. Although what that edge is, Thor isn’t sure, and what’s beyond it—well he’s not sure about that either.

  
He always stays as long as his parishioners need him, after service. This is the part Thor likes most—stopping and speaking to the people who come to him for advice, contemplating God and morality with them, seeing their faith burgeon and grow, a live, almost visceral thing. But more than that, he likes to _know_ the other villagers—how Mrs. Abbott’s flower garden is doing, or how Helen Daly’s medication is helping her walk the path from her house this week, or how Orvar and Vidar are progressing in their archery practice. Thor, who has spent his entire life in the anonymous hustle of the city, takes a unique pleasure in this—the slow pulse of life in Asgardia and how he can stay behind after service and get to know something about each villager and how, in turn, each villager will get to know something about him. It’s a human connection he had sorely missed growing up and even though he goes to sleep alone at night, it’s a human connection that sustains him and his faith.

Today, though, the energy feels different. Mrs. Abbott leaves before the service ends and Helen Daly is ill again, so she was not present anyway. Orvar and Vidar give Thor strange looks and when Thor shakes hands with Sigyn and Jarl, they both ignore the sermon and ask him how they can be protected from the sea creature.

“There is no sea creature, Sigyn,” Thor says, with a smile that feels like he’s breaking his teeth. “Come now, Jarl, you know as well as I do there is nothing to myths and magic. Vali drowned, like a child of nine might when left unguarded near water at night. Everyone is being paranoid for no reason.”

Sigyn and Jarl pretend to agree with him, but Thor can see the fear in their eyes. They skitter away from him, along with everyone else, and Thor is left with an overwhelming feeling of frustration. It’s just as well, he supposes, because he’s pretending too. His smile is as brittle as his temper right now, so when the last of his parishioners leave, he cleans the chapel, closes the doors, and sets back out down the path back to the village, alone. His fingers close around the worn cover of his favorite Bible, his only comfort.

Behind him, still on the rooftop of the chapel, two crows sit, staring at his retreating back. Thor dips below the hill and with a soft sound, one of the crows ruffles its feathers and flies off.

*

**three.**

The Ifing Sea looks different, depending on where you stand and when you stand there. The cold blue water hugs the coastline, trapping the village from one side. Under the dark of the night sky, it’s an oppressive body, leaving no room for escape. In the morning, however, it’s different, the tentative colors of the morning sun sliding across water that is beginning to regain its color—soft tones of blue that feel as fresh as the chilled morning air. After noon, when the sun reaches its zenith in the sky and begins to tilt down again, the Sea takes on yet another character.

Thor stands at the crest of the hill, idling in front of his favorite bench. Here, at the top of the slope, with the sun still high, but beginning to wane, the Sea is not cruel or refreshing—it is something hopeful instead, a body of water shimmering under the bright yellow-white light of the star above. On a normal Sunday, after a service well received, this would be a comforting sight for him. He does not often get time to himself, but what time he does, he likes to spend outside—in the village garden, helping tend to the vegetables and flowers or walking along the shoreline, picking up oddly shaped rocks, or simply sitting on a bench overlooking the Sea and worrying at the threads of his life.

He has the time today, but he does not have the peace of heart.

He thinks it would be difficult to gain peace of heart, after a Sunday like this.

Thor has too much pent up frustration to sit down with his journal, like usual. The energy buzzes through his limbs, the angry twist of his heart when he stops to think about it for one moment too long. He hasn’t felt this restless in a very long time. He grits his teeth and finds his jaw aches from tension. Thor puts his Bible down on the bench. He hasn’t felt this _angry_ in a long time.

He fingers the beads of the rosary at his neck, the wooden cross resting at his throat smooth beneath his tips. He rubs at it every time he feels himself come loose. He does this more often than he realizes, because the wood has the soft feel of something worn down by the oils of fingertips. It’s not well-loved, it’s well-used, and there’s a subtle difference there.

It gives him comfort, anyway, and by the time Thor reaches the bottom of the hill, he’s at least marginally less ready to strangle someone.

The Sea down here, by the coast, looks different than it does at the top of the slope. It’s more immediate in every sense, the water lapping at white and black rocks smoothed into round and oblong pebbles, the chill creeping under clothes from moisture hanging thick beyond the water, the smell of the sea sinking into every inch the salty air touches. Thor reaches down and picks up a rock, cold and wet, and after a moment, sends it skipping across the surface.

The ripples don’t chill him, but they do make him pause, the smaller ripples spreading larger and larger, until Thor thinks the whole of his impression has been swallowed by the ocean far beyond.

That’s the thing, he thinks, about concepts beyond the human boundary; it’s only terrifying once you can’t see it any longer. There’s an easy enough explanation for what the villagers have seen and an even easier explanation for the tragedies that keep occurring. The truth likely lies somewhere in between that and a mythical sea creature that is preying on Asgardia. That space, like the larger ripples, before they get swallowed by the sea, is just discernible enough to ignore completely. The villagers see sea creatures where there are none. Myth and faith are funny that way, except Thor can see nothing in front of him and he can feel God all around them.

He shivers and sends another pebble across the water. This doesn’t catch and cause any ripples at all. This one sinks, swallowed by the Ifing Sea.

  
He wanders up and down the coast for longer than he means to, picking up rocks, running his thumb over smooth and rough edges and letting them go. He feels unsettled, too tight in his own skin, as though the sermon is stretching against the confines of his body.

He had been as shocked as the rest of the village to find Vali gone that morning. Thor remembers the child clearly among the other village children; a bright-eyed, copper-haired, bright boy with a wide smile and an inability to sit still for longer than two minutes. Vali played near the shore often, with his bright red ball, and it had struck Thor as irresponsible once or twice, but Thomas Burrows-Thornton had the right of it—Vali, much like the other children of the village, had known how to swim. Swimming means little for a small body against heavy tides, but Thor had seen Vali and his friends out in the water more than occasionally; there was no question they were not only swimmers, but strong ones.

Rindr had been inconsolable, fingers and knees digging in to the rough rocks at the shore. Thor and Skadi had to hold her by the shoulders to keep her from wading out into the water after her son. The air had felt particularly heavy that morning, sparking across their skins, like electricity was hanging in between their bodies.

“It feels like magic,” Gerdr had said, arms wrapped around herself. Her bright green eyes turned out to the sea. “Like the morning he took Frey and Freya.”

Thor, his fingers digging into a wailing Rindr’s arm, had looked up at Gerdr then.

“He?” Thor had asked, and that had been his mistake.

“The creature,” Gerdr said and when she had turned back to Thor, both Skadi and Rindr had gone stiff next to him. “There is a spirit in our Sea, Father. He protects us and he takes from us. It has always been this way.”

“There is no sea creature, Gerdr,” Thor had said, but his words had fallen on faint ears.

“Asgardia is at his mercy,” Gerdr had said, giving Thor a faint smile with a haunting edge. “It does no good to pretend he will not want payment for letting us live.”

  
That was how it had started, a mere weeks ago.

It was his own foolishness that had allowed the story to spread as far as it had since.

  
Thor has never believed in subtlety. It is a trait that is hard come by among most and certainly for him. It makes him a strange choice for the clergy, but perhaps more relatable too. The truth of the matter is that Thor believes in addressing fear; he himself has never seen a point to hiding it under dark eaves.

So he addresses the myth during the next sermon and finds out quickly that the alternative to sweeping fears under rugs is to spread them out in the clearing. He tells his congregation that the Sea Creature is not real and in saying so, it becomes real.

He goes to bed that night with a foul headache and a need to bury himself in bottles he has not actively craved in years.

That is how Asgardia begins to worship the Ifing Sea; one God at the top of the hill and a monster at the bottom.

  
He looks out onto the cold grey, the wind sinking fingers of wet, chilled air beneath the thick material of his cassock. Thor stands at the bottom, the pebbles undisturbed, his hair whipping around his jaw.

When he closes his eyes, he can feel the pulse of it; the rhythm of his one life and a spirit nestled just underneath his breast bone. It grounds him as much as it unsettles him, to feel so alive and to know he is dying, that he will die, that he has died.

When he opens them, he can almost see him standing there; an old man in a dark jacket, a black patch over one eye, the blue of his other staring unblinkingly. His hair would be greyer now, longer perhaps, or even wild. Odin exists only in Thor’s living memories now, although he appears to him when he least expects it. It is not the glower on his brows or the twitch of displeasure around his mouth that makes Thor’s breath catch. It’s the way he does not move.

Even in his death, the old man is unmooring his son.

Thor swallows and shakes his head and Odin disappears.

He doesn’t know, then, whether it was Odin at all and it strikes him all at once—how thin the veneer is between reality and dreams.

Thor sways on his feet thinking: it could be Odin, then, or it could be Thor, sometime in the distance. It could be neither of them, but the sign of the Devil.

Thor digs his heels into the gravel and clutches at his rosary. He says a quick prayer and shakes his head to dispel the dread crawling up his spine.

When he turns back to land, he pauses, thinking he sees something ripple in the distance, a blue on top of blue. But as soon as it’s there it’s also gone.

Unsettled, Thor shakes his head and curls his fingers tighter around the cross in his palm. He leaves the Sea behind and makes his way back up the hill.

  
He pauses when he reaches the edge of the path to the village, three children cutting into his way. Two of them laugh, giving chase, and one of them nearly barrels into Thor on his way after his friends. Thor grabs his arm before he topples over, steadying the child with a, “Whoa there.”

“Sorry, Father,” the child—a boy of blond curls and bright green eyes, rimmed red around the edges, who Thor recalls often seeing with Vali—spills. He pushes his curls back, his cheeks flushed. “I did not see you.”

“That I did notice,” Thor says kindly, with a chuckle. He helps the boy right himself and expects him to give chase after his friends again. Instead, the boy hesitates. “Can I help you?”

“Father,” the boy says, after chewing on his lips for a moment. “Is it true, what they say?”

Thor watches him closely.

“About what?”

“The Sea,” the boy says. He worries at his bottom lip and then rubs a hand over his nose. “About the...creature there.”

Thor feels a pulse of irritation that he works hard to swallow.

“That is myths and old wives tales,” he says. “There is no sea creature—”

“—Tomas.”

“Tomas,” Thor says. “In almost all things God has a plan for us. It does not matter if we cannot see what that is.”

The boy frowns.

“His plan was to...take Vali?” he asks.

Thor feels uneasy.

“We are not divine, so we cannot know what His plans are, Tomas,” he says. “Or why they are His plans.”

“What if,” Tomas says, struggling. He fidgets, pulling at his curls. Then he lets out a nervous rush of breath and says it very fast, “What if the Sea Creature is God’s plan because I don’t know anything about plans, but I do know what I saw.”

That makes something cold open in the pit of Thor’s stomach.

“What you saw?”

“Yes,” Tomas says and looks fearfully at the Sea. “It was on the water. It was...blue.”

“Many things are blue near the sea, Tomas,” Thor says, kindly. “The Sea herself is blue.”

“This was not the Sea, Father,” Tomas says, tearing back to him. Thor does not miss the way his mouth tugs down; the way his little limbs tremble. “The Sea does not have eyes.”

Thor swallows, discomfort rippling up his spine.

“But this did?”

“I saw eyes,” Tomas says. “They looked at me and I felt frozen, turned to ice.”

“What did they look like?” Thor asks.

“They were cold,” Tomas says after a moment. The wind runs between them and his curls, askew, rifle around his face. “And...angry.”

“And what of the face?” Thor asks.

“It looked like it was hungry,” Tomas says. He shivers, looking terrified and miserable.

“Tomas!” his friends call then. “Are you coming?”

The child looks up at Thor and Thor reads his expression for what it is; plain, open fear. It might not be the truth, but it is at least his truth.

“Go,” Thor says.

The boy runs.

Thor is left looking after him, wondering how children were supposed to survive a village built on monsters tales. Then he remembers blue of his own, but that, he finds, is easier to ignore.

*


	2. II.

**four.**

This time, Thor drowns.

He has no memory of this, or perhaps it is all memory. He opens his eyes to the deep blue of water, fathoms under where he started, the dark pressed so close it drowns in his throat. He thrashes where he sinks and finds he’s forgotten how to swim.

His lungs seize without air and his chest seizes with fear. He claws at the water and it claws back at him, sinks its teeth into his arms, the flesh of his legs, the soft spot where his throat meets his chest.

He tries to cry for help, but there is no one there to answer him.

Still, his mouth opens and closes, bubbles streaming from his nose.

He asks the Sea again— _help_.

He opens his eyes and sees them glow in the dark, then.

Two claws wrap around his wrist.  
  
  
Thor wakes up with a gasp, like the Sea choking in his throat. His covers are tossed to the ground, leaving the cold, humid air sticking to his bare chest. His heart races, shadows flickering behind his eyes.

He grasps blindly for the glass of water next to him on his night table and, fingers scrabbling around, lifts it to his mouth. He swallows it down, like a man parched.

He sits in bed, trembling. His wrist, the mark there, burns. There’s a memory here and, in the same breath, a nightmare. He feels it in his veins: the beat of the Sea.

It thuds, thunders really, louder and louder, the sound driving him slowly out of both body and mind, until he stands and dresses.

He leaves through the front door.

He does not look back.

  
Thor goes to her then; walks the path down until he hits the crest of the hill and follows the slope to the bottom.

He reaches the water in the dead of the night, him in loose pants and soft shirt with a jacket, unbuttoned and hanging freely at the front.

The air shifts around him, cold and heavy, something alive in it; electricity or the undercurrent of an animal, barely restrained. His feet stop at the edge of the water, the gravel rough against the bottom of his shoes. He bends down then, slips them off and, heart ratcheting up, steps forward.

He breathes only when the water slides against his ankles, slick and so, so cold.

He takes in a breath slowly, the beat measured, and feels the crystals in his lungs, the frost prickle on top of his skin.

Thor closes his eyes and stands there. If he is in the watch or prayer, he could not say. He is, at least, in some forged peace; at least for this one moment.

He stands there, at the mouth of the Sea, all night.

Nothing rises from the depths to take him and he does not search in the shallows for what he does not believe.

It is as close to God as he has felt in a long time. That knowledge should make him ache with guilt. Instead, he feels free.

  
As the sun comes up, a sound startles the silence of dawn.

Thor opens his eyes and fishes his phone out of his pocket.

“Ma?” he asks, softly.

“I had a vision,” Frigga says.

Thor watches the sun slowly light its way into the sky and says nothing.

“I saw your hands,” she says, “and they were claws.”

Thor looks down. His human hands are large and pale, as they ever are.

“I do not have claws, Ma,” Thor says.

“I saw your eyes and they were red,” she says.

Thor looks at his reflection in the water. It looks back up at him—blue-eyed and tired.

“My eyes are still blue,” Thor says.

“I saw you swallowed by the Sea, Thor,” Frigga says softly and sounds, for once, frightened. “You called to me and I couldn’t answer.”

Thor feels it again in his throat, the press of water. He parts his lips and there’s salt where there was none before.

“I know how to swim,” he says, finally.

Frigga says nothing for a long moment.

“So did your father,” she says.

They say nothing more for some time and, eventually, Thor puts his phone away.

He stands there, shivering in the cold, until the village stirs to life behind him.

Only then does he move.

  
Volstagg catches him on his way back up.

“Well you’re a sight for sore eyes!” his friend says, mouth twitching into a smile under a red mustache and an even larger red beard.

“Volstagg,” Thor says as his friend embraces him. It is like being enveloped by a warm, scratchy marshmallow and it is only disarming because of who gives it. As it is, Thor only realizes then how cold he must be, because the warmth makes him shiver under his jacket. “It has been too long.”

“I believe I should be saying that,” Volstagg grins, letting him go, but keeping his hands on Thor’s shoulders, as though to hold him in place for better assessment. Volstagg gives him a sweeping look up and down. “I remember when you were newly here and in need of a friend. Now you are Father Odinson, with time for everyone but myself.”

It’s meant in jest, but Thor frowns, the guilt immediate.

“Come, now,” he says. “You have been just as busy, with the wife and—how many kids is it now? Five? Six?”

Volstagg laughs at that and finally lets go.

“Five,” he says. “With another on the way.”

“Someone’s been busy,” Thor says, just to hear his friend laugh again.

“What can I say, _Father_?” Volstagg grins. “The nights are long and very cold.”

“I am certain,” Thor says, mouth twitching. “Were you just coming from the pub?”

Volstagg rubs him stomach and says, “Going, actually. I thought I would take in a nice pint, perhaps a full breakfast.”

Thor turns slightly, eyes on the sun, now a bit higher than it was before.

“A bit early for that,” he says.

“Nonsense,” Volstagg says. “It is just the right time for breakfast. Will you join me?”

Thor considers it, honestly. He has not eaten in some hours and a breakfast would warm him up just as surely as a shower. A pint wouldn’t hurt, even at this early hour. But then he remembers the day; his day to go to town and bring back supplies for the village.

“Another day,” Thor says, apologetically.

Volstagg nods, because his friend is, as ever, interminably good-natured, but then he looks past Thor too, watching the water. He speaks, after a minute.

“It seems so calm now,” he says. “Almost deathly still. It’s unsettling.”

Thor feels the water’s pulse in the side of his neck.

“Unsettling or peaceful?” he asks.

Volstagg considers this, running a hand through his beard.

“Do you think it’s true?” he asks and Thor stiffens beside him. “What they say?”

“What they say about what?” Thor asks, slowly.

Volstagg hums to himself in contemplation, then turns his brown eyes on Thor.

“The creature,” he says. “The Sea Monster. Leviathan. Whatever it is you want to call him—it.”

Thor feels that pulse again, but the pull is weaker under the spike of heat in his stomach.

“It isn’t real, Volstagg,” Thor says. “Surely you know that.”

Volstagg shakes his head.

“Aye,” he says. “I suppose I do. But these days—it makes you wonder.”

“Everything happens for a reason,” Thor says. “There is an explanation for what is happening and it is not mythical creatures. You are better than this, old friend.”

Volstagg does not take offense to that. If anything, it seems like he’s considering it.

“Am I?” he says. “Some days I don’t know. Living in a place like this, as long as I have, you begin to notice things—think things.”

“Things?” Thor watches closely. “Things such as—?”

Volstagg shakes his head.

“Nothing is ever as easy as you’d like it to be, Father,” he says. “Asgardia is old and in old places, well. The world has never been without magic.”

“You have been talking to my mother,” Thor says, giving Volstagg a wry smile.

“How is Frigga?”

“Oh, mixing herbs and calling it potions, I’m sure,” Thor says.

“I would drink that lady’s potion without question,” Volstagg says. Then he sighs and shifts. “Unfortunately, she is nowhere near, but fortunately, the tavern is. We are all in need of our own potions and magic, most days.”

“That kind, I will believe in,” Thor chuckles. That earns a smile from Volstagg.

“Come by soon?” Volstagg asks. “Like the old days.”

Thor gives him his word; promises to stop by the pub sooner rather than later. His friend takes leave of him after a clap to his shoulder and Thor watches him go, making his way down the pebbled path of the village toward the one pub that serves them all.

He contemplates Volstagg’s words as he goes, in an indistinct, abstract kind of way. The word _magic_ rings in his ears, fills the hollows of his head.

Behind him, the Sea shifts and Thor feels its pull, strong, strange, and heady.

*

**five.**

The air is tense, held still with anticipation, but if that is all that plagues Asgardia, Thor can tolerate it. The weeks after Vali’s disappearance are tinged with the kind of hysteria that he cannot abide, but slowly, much like grief, it dissipates. 

He wakes up one morning to the sun drifting lazily through the sky and he feels lighter than he has in nearly a month. He sits with his rosary beads for a while, in thought and prayer, and when he finishes, he tucks it against his neck and rises, a smile on his face. 

It lasts only as long as it takes him to leave his cottage and walk the path into the village. 

It’s there that he hears the broken, guttural cries, the fear and hysteria broken clean across the crowd that gathers outside the baker’s house. 

He stops at the outskirts, his pulse ticking up as the cries grow louder and louder and it’s only when someone grasps his sleeve that he hears the baker’s voice. 

“ _My child_ ,” he cries. “ _It has taken my child!_ ” 

“What—” Thor asks, throat dry. 

“Idunn,” the person at his side says. He looks at her, dark hair and dark eyes looking ahead, that worry between her brows that is so familiar to him. Sif watches the scene, as calm as the village is hysterical. 

“The baker’s daughter,” Thor says. He knows the girl—all of thirteen years old and sweet as apples. 

“She’s disappeared during the night,” Sif says. “All that was left behind was a ribbon from her hair.” 

“Where?” Thor asks, dreading the answer as he does. 

Sif turns to him then, as though she knows the answer and knows, just as well, that he will be displeased by it. 

“By the water, Thor,” she says. “Where else?” 

  
One child is bad enough, but two is worse. It keeps growing, larger and larger, a chilling problem that is made worse by the whispers that accompany it. There is an explanation for this that does not involve magic, but the human alternative is no better. Thor watches the police come from the town, crawling through the paths and homes that he knows and loves, uniforms on, hats on their heads, and he feels sick to his stomach at the intrusion. He doesn’t know whether a sea creature is any better than a serial killer or a serial kidnapper, but holds out hope that it is the Sea, in the natural way in which the sea poses a danger to any child. 

“This is a tragedy,” he keeps repeating, although his advice falls on deaf ears. “We need to keep the children away from the water. We must be vigilant. There is nothing more here than that.” 

  
“You cannot say that for certain,” Sif tells him and that annoys him almost more than anything. 

“You are supposed to be on my side,” Thor accuses her, stung. They watch the police circle the baker’s house. The crowd disperses, except for those who want to talk. There are always villagers who are happy to talk.

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” his friend tells him. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?” 

Thor looks at her and folds his large arms across his chest. Sif, being Sif, does not seem at all fazed. 

“Why am I being stubborn? That I do not let the village run away with fairytales and myths that go bump in the night?” 

“You believe in a higher power,” Sif says, tilting her head. “Is this so different?” 

“A sea monster is not a higher power,” Thor grunts. His feeling of annoyance deepens. 

Sif shrugs. 

“To you,” is all she says.

It leaves Thor feeling disgruntled, although he doesn’t get the chance to say anything more to her. Her phone rings and she fishes it out of her pocket.

She turns away to take the call and Thor watches the lines of her shoulders as she goes.

It is not the same, he thinks. There is a difference between Faith and a monster that takes children by the water. One is grace and purpose; the other, terror, nothing but a dark story to explain the dark of night.  
  
Thor turns himself, shouldering past officers he does not stop to apologize to. He takes the path out of the village and all the way up the hill to the chapel. 

  
The inquest lasts not one day, but several. The officers seem to find no more answers than Thor himself can give, while agitating the villagers in the same vein. They come and talk to Thor, a man with short, blond hair and his partner, another man with brown hair tied back at his neck and a fake arm that is not noticeable, except when he takes a notepad out of his pocket and Thor catches the grooves of his metal fingers in the morning light. 

“Tell us what you know, Father,” the blond officer asks and Thor has to bite his tongue to keep from telling them to leave, to stay away from where they have no business. 

“I’m sure you know more than I do,” Thor says and the blond man smiles at him. It’s warm, which makes Thor rankle all the more. 

“Just trying to gather all the evidence here,” he says. “One kid missing is a tragedy, two is an incident. Maybe you know something you could tell us?” 

“Otherwise,” his partner says, looking past Thor, and Thor knows exactly what he’s looking at. “All we have to go on is—” 

“A sea creature,” Thor says, reluctantly. 

The two officers watch him closely and Thor feels his arms close across the front of his chest before he realizes he’s done so. 

“Is that—” the brown-haired one says, with a frown. “Is there any reason to believe that might be the case?” 

Thor snorts. 

“That a sea creature is taking the villagers, Officer—” Thor glances at his badge. “Barnes?” 

“I’d like to blame it on a sea creature,” the blond one says. “It’s much better than suspecting one of your neighbors.” 

“It is neither,” Thor says. 

“Why do you say that?” Barnes says, his blue eyes narrowing. The blond glances at him and then glances at Thor. 

“Because,” Thor says. “It is easier to believe something fantastic than what is real. If you believe something has happened here beyond your control, you are absolved from blame. But if what happened is real, then maybe there is something that could have been done to avoid the tragedy.” 

“I don’t follow,” the blond says, the space between his eyebrows drawn close. 

Thor sighs and runs a hand through his hair, grown longer and longer. 

“People around here,” he says softly, “are not ready to be held responsible for what has happened. They seek magical absolution instead.” 

“You’re saying they’re making up the sea monster in order to not feel guilty?” Officer Barnes asks. 

“I’m saying there is no sea monster,” Thor says. His thumb brushes the cross at his throat. To his side, his fingers curl into a fist. “There are only mistakes made by us all.” 

The officers contemplate that and Thor closes his eyes. He tries not to sway on his feet, but it is difficult, when the world sways around him. He feels as though he has sea legs; they’ve turned to jelly on land. 

Against the back of his neck, he can feel the Sea breeze slide across his skin. His mouth tastes of salt, his throat filled, again, with water. 

When Thor opens his eyes again, he thinks he sees something blue, hovering, at the corner of his vision. He takes in a quick, sharp breath, but when he turns his head, the figure is gone. 

“We’ll contact you if we have any other questions,” the blond officer says and hands Thor a business card. 

Thor takes it and tucks it into his pocket. The officers leave and Thor is left at his desk, trembling. 

He is in his office, in the chapel, when he sees the flicker for the first time. 

It will not be the last time.

*

The weather takes a turn for the worse, the cold humidity giving away to something that is a little sharper, a little more brutal against the skin. Thor tucks his scarf about his neck and lodges his nose into the warm wool before taking the path into the village. The evenings are quieter now, with fewer children about than there were even a month ago. It is not the weather or the earlier fall of night, but something else altogether. Thor cannot say he blames the villagers for the caution, but it does make him grow weary. His Sunday sermons are tense now, the parishioners pulled taut, like a string ready to snap. No one comes early to service and fewer people stay after to speak with the priest. Rindr has not been to church in nearly a month and Thor would feel hurt, but he supposes he cannot fathom the loss of a child. Only that of a parent. 

He moves quickly against the wind, but quicker still against something else. He does not want to see and he wants less to acknowledge, so he looks straight ahead, at the lights holding steady outside of the buildings; the apothecary, the bakery, the small, one-roomed wooden cottage they use for their postal service six days a week, during hours that vary depending on the schedule of Mr. Wyatt R. Holland, the Postmaster. 

Lately it has gotten worse and that worries Thor, but he is still of the belief that if he does not look at it, then he will not see it. Anyway, the whole village is hysterical enough without Thor also losing what’s left of his mind. He considers, more than once, calling his mother for some kind of cure—something to help him sleep or sage to hang at his door, or one of the half a dozen other remedies she’s tried on him during his life—but then he realizes he’s doing exactly what the villagers are. Just because he cannot explain the flicker, does not mean that there is no explanation. 

Perhaps it does not exist at all. That would be the most favorable explanation, to him. 

It encroaches closer and Thor shakes his head. He pulls his coat closer around him and, ducking his head against the wind, hurries up the path toward the tavern. 

  
He is waiting inside, which is both a welcome sight and helps loosen something tight and wound in Thor’s chest. Thor has not seen his old friend in months, which he supposes, is what happens when one moves to an old coastal village in the middle of nowhere. Still, Heimdall makes his way north from the city often enough that Thor can convince him to pay Asgardia a visit before going farther up in his travels. 

“You are already in your cups, I see,” Thor says, finding Heimdall with a tankard in front of him, his long dreadlocks spread over the top of bare shoulders. As long as Thor has known Heimdall, he has run hot, although it is a bit ludicrous to see him in the beginnings of winter, sitting in a tavern in the north country, dressed in trousers and a tank top. 

It is not an unpleasant sight, but Thor had long ago tucked away any feelings he had on that matter. Now he is above such things, of course, but mostly he has known Heimdall for so long that he would be remiss to mistake their feelings of brotherliness for anything more. 

Heimdall has seen Thor at his worst and now, Thor hopes, at his best, so everything else in the middle is for them and them alone. 

“You are late,” Heimdall says, in a low voice that Thor knows better than his own. “What was I supposed to do? Sit here in the cold and wait for you?” 

“The cold could not be a surprise,” Thor says, mouth twitching. “You could have dressed for the weather better.” 

Heimdall makes a noise that sounds a little bit like _feh_ and motions to the tavern-keep by the name of Aegir, a tall man with a head as bald as the moon and a black beard down to the top of his chest, who nods his respect to Thor before bringing him a tankard of ale. 

“On the house, Father,” Aegir says and Heimdall grumbles. 

“I certainly had to pay for it,” he says and Thor laughs. 

“I helped him nurse his sick mother back to health when the weather was warmer,” Thor says. “He feels he owes me, although I keep telling him I’m perfectly capable of buying my own beer.” 

“The clergy pays that well, huh?” Heimdall says, mouth twitching. 

“I told you to join with me, but I believe you said—” 

“I’ll keep the drinking and the fucking, thanks.” Heimdall grins. His eyes, a brown so light it nearly looks like molten gold, glow in the tavern light. Heimdall is a man who is competent and trustworthy, but, most importantly, he is a man who Thor has experienced most of life with. That means that as stern as Heimdall pretends to be, Thor knows his vices just as well as his own. It makes him laugh, mostly, when anyone thinks Heimdall a paragon of virtue. He has seen him three sheets to the wind, an arm around a man and a woman each.

“Well, I can share the drinking anyway,” Thor says and raises his glass. Heimdall clinks his against and they both drink. 

“You don’t know what you’re missing,” Heimdall says. “With the fucking.” 

“You know just as well as I do that I did plenty of that,” Thor says, swallowing his beer. “Before.”  
  
“And what was so bad about that?” Heimdall asks, a half-grin on his face. 

“Nothing,” Thor says and takes another mouthful. “People change, old friend.” 

“I see that,” Heimdall says. Thor feels his stare on him, but he has nothing to hide. Thor knows how he looks—with his long hair tied back and the cross at his throat. He’s a wolf in priest’s clothing, although the wolf is not deceitful, but reformed. “And what has changed since the last I came to visit?” 

Thor frowns at that and looks at Heimdall. Around them, the tavern seems to grow louder. Well, it is a Thursday evening, although every evening is a loud evening in a village with not much to do and only one watering hole to its name. 

“What do you mean?”

Heimdall only hums at first. But then he looks around and he seems to contemplate this. 

“It feels different,” he says. “The air, the village. I can’t put my finger on it. Something feels…”

Thor watches him, uneasy.

Heimdall shrugs and takes a drink.

“Fraught.”

“There have been some incidents,” Thor says. He feels something go out of him as he says it aloud, a tense lock that clicks loose. He takes in a breath and exhales it. “A tragedy. Multiple, actually.” 

“Ah,” Heimdall says, considering. “It does seem subdued, even for a village that normally has the pulse of a grey rag.” 

“Hey,” Thor says warningly, and sighs. “Children are disappearing, Heimdall, without a trace. It has shaken even the most stalwart villager.” 

“Why do I get the feeling you are mincing words?” Heimdall asks. 

Thor gives his old friend a tired, wry smile. 

“I see you can still read me better than anyone.” 

“You are not so hard to read,” Heimdall says, sounding amused. And then, mockingly, “ _Father._ ” 

Thor sighs louder and tries not to inhale his beer. In the meantime, Heimdall drums his fingers on the bar, the wood dark and stained with years of spilled drink. 

“I feel everyone is going insane,” Thor finally mumbles into his beer. He gets a loud, rumbling laugh at his side for his effort and when he finally reemerges, Heimdall is watching him with not a little amusement. 

“Was that so hard to say?” he asks. 

“It is not very Father-ly of me,” Thor says and Heimdall snorts. 

“You may be a Father to everyone else, but at your core, you are still Thor.” 

Thor doesn’t know how to interpret that, but he doesn’t get the chance to be disgruntled. Heimdall motions for more drinks and nods at Thor. 

“Perhaps they are,” he says. “Grief makes monsters of us all.” 

Thor, who has spent years not examining his own grief or his relationship with it, leans closer to the bar, uneasily. He stays like that, unsettled and unsure of what to say, until he’s given another tankard of ale.

It’s only then that he swallows his pride and turns to his old friend—the oldest that he’s ever had. 

“Heimdall,” he asks, quietly, and Heimdall raises an eyebrow. “We have been friends since childhood.” 

“Yes,” Heimdall says. “I was there.” 

“Did I ever—” Thor begins and stops. In the corner of his vision, he sees a flicker. 

He takes in a breath and it whistles between his teeth. 

“Did anything ever happen to me, as a child?” 

Heimdall hums and takes a drink. He doesn’t answer for a long time. 

When he does, he looks at Thor as though he has been expecting this question and, now having been asked it, he doesn’t quite know where to begin. 

“That depends,” Heimdall says. “What do you think happened to you, Thor?” 

Thor doesn’t answer for a long, hesitant minute. Then, looking his old friend in the eyes, he says, “When I was a child, I think I drowned.”

*

**six.**

This time, Thor gasps. His skin is bare, slick with sweat, heated in a way that’s become unfamiliar to him. He sits, sheets pooled at his waist, his muscles taut, his body like a bow that’s been tuned at either end. The creature looks at him, hovering over the edge of the bed, one knee on top of the sheets and its other leg on the ground behind him. 

For a moment, they stare at each other. 

The creature is the color of the Sea, a blue so deep it turns nearly black in the dark of the room. Its eyes are red, its hair raven black and gently curling over the top of slim blue shoulders and down the middle of its back. It has a gentle slope to its nose and a mouth that’s a slightly darker shade of blue than its cool skin. The creature flickers and Thor smells salt water and a faint ocean breeze; it sticks to the back of his throat and when he swallows, he tastes salt on his tongue. The creature watches Thor and when it reaches forward, it becomes clear that whatever it is has taken human shape. His fingers are long, his nails an icy blue so light it’s nearly white. 

There are ridges raised along his bare skin, shapes like ripples in the water. The creature looks at him, tilts his head, and then Thor’s mouth is on his. 

The creature makes a muffled sound, slick like disturbed water, and Thor, on his knees, has his hand at the creature’s jaw, the other digging into the creature’s bare chest. 

The creature only hesitates for a moment, confused, as though learning, but if he is, he learns quickly, before curling his fingers into Thor’s hair. Thor feels the pull of it sharp and pleasurable against his skull. The creature learns to open his mouth and, in return, Thor slides his tongue in, curious to discover what the Sea tastes like. The creature freezes before he opens his mouth wider and when he starts making needy noises, Thor presses closer, running his hand down from his jaw, his palms catching over the smooth, ice cold curve of his shoulders and down his torso. He stops to thumb at the creature’s nipples and the creature makes a keening sound that Thor likes so much that he does it again. 

The creature presses forward then, his movement frantic, almost hungry, in a desperate attempt to get more pleasure. That makes them both lose their balance, falling back onto the covers, slightly tangled together. They breathe heavily together for a moment before Thor turns to look at him. 

“Who are you?” Thor asks the creature, his voice rough, deeper with a kind of bone-deep hunger that he hasn’t felt flare in what has felt like lifetimes. 

The creature opens and closes his mouth and lets out a noise that sounds like water crashing against the rocks. It makes something spike in Thor’s chest; a fear that he can’t quite place, but something else too. Every part of him aches for it, to hear it again, this sound that floods his veins. 

“Another name,” Thor says and his throat grows quickly dry as the creature looks at him. 

The moonlight falls through the window, lighting upon his bright blue, bare skin; the lean lines and curves of him, the muscles barely contained just underneath a form that Thor can recognize intimately. Thor cannot remember, now, whether he would lie with men or women, but in this moment he does not so much care. 

The light makes the creature’s eyes shift colors, from red to deep ocean blue to a green as bright as jade. His features are fine, almost delicate, and his expression curious, contemplative even. Thor can smell the water on him and it makes him yearn in a way that he cannot swallow and ache in a place he cannot reach. The creature is beautiful, a kind of beauty that Thor wishes to cradle to his chest, but is afraid he’ll break to try. 

The creature moves his blue mouth again and this time, his voice is deep and smooth, like the press of the Sea come to life. 

“Loki,” he says.

Thor’s heart beats rapidly, pressing quickly against his chest, a sound so loud he can hear it in his ears. 

“Loki,” Thor repeats and the creature brightens, nearly glows in front of him, like moonlight on the ocean.

It’s a sight so exquisitely beautiful, it holds tight in Thor’s chest. He feels unmoored by it, the knowledge that such beauty can exist for him to taste. 

He rolls over, his elbow to one side of Loki, hovering over the creature’s face. Loki looks up at him, watching carefully, and when Thor leans down to kiss him, he closes his eyes and kisses him back. 

Thor’s other hand skims its way down Loki’s cool torso and when it reaches Loki’s cock, he kisses Loki again before wrapping his fingers around the base. 

Loki hisses in surprise into his mouth and bucks up into his hand, his entire body writhing under Thor as Thor kisses him relentlessly and strokes him into surprising hardness. Loki pants into Thor’s mouth, his skin flushing cold under Thor’s bare chest, and Thor feels it too, within him, how hot and cold he is, simultaneously, like his body has been flooded with heat and tempered by the night air. 

Loki seems to fumble, fingers scrabbling hard into Thor’s hip, before he reciprocates, his cool fingers also wrapping around Thor’s cock. He copies Thor, action for action, and it’s without any kind of finesse, but it is with a rhythm and they match in a way that slowly loosens whatever fine grasp Thor has kept on his lucid thinking. Instead, his sounds harden into grunts and his thoughts become caught in a loop, until he reaches down, moving Loki’s length aside, finger pressing against his entrance. 

Loki seems to tense under him and Thor hesitates, but then Loki’s nails find the back of Thor’s arm and dig in, encouraging him to continue. Thor presses the finger in and Loki hisses and seems to wriggle under him, until Thor finds the cool spot inside him and then Loki’s eyes roll into the back of his head, his back arching off the bed. Thor presses it again and then again and Loki makes noises that hit the back of Thor’s ear, like rushing water, the sound of restless tides on frantic mornings. Thor presses another finger in and after a moment, Loki relaxes, although his nails dig in so tightly into Thor’s flesh that he’s left with crescents as stark as the moon on his arms.

Thor removes his fingers and Loki barely has time to whine into his mouth before Thor kisses him harder, distracting him as he lines up and slowly pushes his way in.

It’s both tighter and looser than Thor could have expected, the sensation cool, his skin burning under a heat he can’t quite quench. He moves slowly at first and then quicker and then they’re moving against each other, a ship against choppy waters, the sounds falling out of Loki’s mouth mingling with Thor’s own. They kiss and it’s cool and sweet and heated at the same time, their touches hot, their brows alight with fever. Thor can feel Loki sink into his skin, through his skin, until he boils in the very core of him, something so very like the Sea raging in the middle of a storm. 

It overwhelms him and if it overwhelms him, it overwhelms Loki too, his face slick, although whether with tears that are his own or Thor’s, Thor couldn’t say. 

Thor hits that cool spot within Loki again and again and Loki’s cry grows louder just before he spills, water so blue it glistens across his chest. Loki then draws him closer, his heart beating so quickly that Thor can feel it through his skin, against his own chest. Loki puts his mouth to Thor’s nipples then and the sensation is so cold that Thor feels his own orgasm crest and—

  
Thor wakes up with a loud cry. He bolts up in bed, sitting up so quickly he hit his head back against the headboard and is rewarded for his effort with a splitting headache he doesn’t have time to acknowledge. He gasps, trying to force air into his lungs. He’s sweating, his skin sticky and hot, covered in sheen, his heart hammering somewhere in his throat. The sheets are a tangled mess somewhere around his feet and his boxers, for the first time in as long as he can remember, are a wet mess themselves.

The dream is so vivid, he can nearly feel it, even now, skin on his skin, nails digging into the back of his arms. On the verge of panicking, he checks the backs of his arms and finds nothing there. He scrapes his thumbs over his mouth and finds them normal, not cold nor swollen from kissing. 

He searches the corners of his room with his eyes and finds nothing—no flickers, no shadows, no beautiful sea creatures with glinting red and sometimes green eyes, watching him as though it would like to devour what it sees. 

Trembling, Thor pushes the remaining sheets away, gets up and goes to his window. He’s shaking as he opens it and looks out, down across the edges of the village and toward the water.

He watches, waiting, thinking he’ll see it, hoping—and dreading—it will be there. 

But whatever is growing in his mind is just that; in his mind. He watches until the sun begins to creep up in the sky and his boxers become unbearable to stay in, but he sees, and finds, nothing.

  
Eventually, Thor relinquishes his watch to go take a hot shower that does nothing to wash away his guilt, but does enough to ease the thick knots that have formed in between his shoulders. He sighs, closing his eyes and pressing his forehead against the tiles while water sluices down his arms and back. He’s tired, his muscles aching with exhaustion, as though he had not slept at all or, at least, slept fitfully. The truth is, he is as unsettled awake as he was asleep, equal parts hot and cold, as though his body can’t decide what temperature to regulate to and it’s just as well, because there’s a quiet tremble in his limbs that he can’t quite dispel.

He tries not to think about blue skin or the feeling of long fingers around him and when his thoughts begin to veer too close, he turns the water up hotter, until it feels like it’s burning against his skin.  
  
He dries off and changes his sheets, his mind preoccupied with the effort of trying not to be preoccupied.

Thor wrests his thoughts away from that dangerous edge eventually and spends the first few hours that morning with his Bible, reading and re-reading passages that he hopes will help, and counting prayers on his rosary that he hopes will get to where they need to go.

*

It is another few days of restless, haunted nights before Sif finds him sequestered in his office. 

“We’re drinking,” she says, hands braced against his desk. “Tonight.” 

“I have too much to do,” Thor protests and the lines around her mouth thin. His notepad lays open on his desk, half of a sermon half-scribbled on the yellow pages.

“I don’t care,” she says. “And neither does Fandral.” 

That makes Thor pause, something in him flicker with hope.

“Fandral?” 

“Yeah,” Sif said, with a crooked smile. “He’s returned from his journey. And he has entirely too much to say.”

  
It’s an ambush, at the heart of it, which Thor can’t even be sore about because it has been so long since he’s seen his friends. Sif lives in the village and works nearby, but Fandral lives the kind of nomadic existence that Thor had aspired to in his youth, until everything had slid away from him and he had realized what he really craved was ground under his feet that did not shift. It has only been a few years of friendship, but it is enough that Thor misses his friend when he is gone, wandering through a jungle or a desert somewhere on his way to nirvana. 

“Thor!” Fandral exclaims, one hand clasped on Thor’s shoulder and the other wrapped around his back, pulling him in for a quick and close hug. “It is true what they’ve said.”

“And what is that?” Thor asks, gratefully embracing his friend. 

“You grow uglier by the day,” Fandral says, grinning, and Thor hears himself laugh for the first time in what feels like months.

Thor traces his beard, with a wry smile. 

“And yet I could never grow as ugly as you,” he says. “But I suppose one must always have goals.”

Fandral laughs loudly at that and Thor warms at the sound. This, at least makes sense—him and Fandral, laughing, and Sif standing to the side, her arms crossed, rolling her eyes. 

“Tell me everything, friend,” Thor says, as the three of them take seats at a booth near the end of the room. “What have I missed?”

“Oh the usual, drinking, women, and mosquitos,” Fandral says. “Once you have been bitten by one, you have been bitten by them all.”

“Mosquitos or women?” Thor asks, mouth twitching, and Fandral winks. 

“Indeed.”

Thor snorts and Aegir brings by drinks and a bowl of nuts for the table. 

“I could tell stories for the rest of the night if we want, but I don’t think we really want that,” Fandral says, reaching for his ale. 

“I certainly don’t,” Sif mutters and Fandral grins, raises his glass in toast to her. 

“Tell me what I’ve missed here,” Fandral says to Thor. “What Asgardia has done in my absence.” 

“Other places may change, but we do not,” Thor says. “It is mostly the same. The same villagers doing the same things and only me here to talk to them about things they only half-believe in.” 

“Oh, give them more credit than that,” Fandral says, smirking around a mouth full of peanuts and almonds. “They seem to believe in a lot of things these days.” 

The comment catches Thor off balance. He tries to form his mouth into a smile, but it rings falsely, stuttering even before he’s attempted to finish it. 

In response, Fandral and Sif look concerned. 

“Are you all right?” Sif asks, eyebrow raised. 

Thor opens his mouth to answer and sees it then, out of the corner of his eyes, like a mirage he can’t quite see and can’t quite rid himself of either. It flickers, a dark blue that makes Thor’s blood run cold and his stomach boil hot. 

“It was only a joke,” Fandral says, his frown deepening.

“Yes,” he says, although the word is nearly choked. He turns his head sharply, but the flicker disappears. Fandral turns his head to follow and frowns when he finds nothing.

Thor drinks from his ale, shakily. 

“Yes, everything is fine,” Thor says. “Like I said, no one believes me anyway.”

It does not seem Fandral or Sif do either, but that is no matter to him. Thor finishes his beer and orders another.

  
The flicker vanishes from the edges of his vision and he relaxes with time, although neither Fandral nor Sif seem to do the same. It is the same as it ever is with them—Fandral drawing laughs out of them both and Sif offering razor-sharp wit and observations that leave the other two chastened. Thor, for his part, manages to act like a functional human being, although his jokes don’t quite land as often as he would like and even though his shoulders are no longer a tense line, there’s a knot in his stomach he can’t quite forget. 

Fandral and Sif exchange enough looks that do not even bother to be subtle that eventually Thor rankles.

“What?” he says, with ire. “What is it?” 

“Are you sure you’re all right?” Fandral asks. 

“I am fine,” Thor says, into his second ale. “Do I not look fine?” 

“If you looked fine, would we be asking?” Sif mutters under her breath.

“You do not look well, at least,” Fandral says. “You have not looked so pale since you first arrived.”

Thor frowns at that. “Surely I did not look that terrible?”

“You looked like a living ghost and you sounded like one too,” Sif says. She’s never been one to mince words; she’s never found a use for it. Thor is usually better at appreciating that, but at the moment he feels too compromised to do more than grunt.

Fandral is somewhat kinder, although that might simply be because he’s too busy finishing his drink.

“You looked as though you needed a good night’s sleep and hadn’t had one in a few years,” he finally says. He looks Thor once over, as critically as Fandral can manage, being Fandral. “It’s not so different from how you look now. Have you been having nightmares again?”

The truth is, Fandral and Sif have reason to worry, although Thor is loath to give them that excuse. They have not been friends as long as some, but they have been friends—and good ones, at that—long enough to have seen him poorly wrestle through the wreckage Odin left behind. 

Thor came to Asgardia by way of Faith, but he came to Faith by way of tragedy. And even now, when he closes his eyes, some nights he sees nothing but the cruel, cold spray of the ocean, and Odin walking right into it.  
  
Still, that is his ghost to bear and he can’t help but resent that they will always look at him like this now; as though he has never managed to banish his demons. But that was years past and Thor thinks if there is something unresolved there, if there is something left unprocessed and unaddressed about his father killing himself without warning, leaving only Thor and his mother behind to deal with the complicated grief of his complicated loss, then that is something left to the hands of God. What he suffers from now, anyway—that is a different matter entirely. He just wants peace and what he’s gotten, instead, is bad dreams and a village bordering on break.

So it is not entirely a lie when he sighs and says to both of them, “That is in the past.”

It is, however, a bit of a lie, when he says, “I have been sleeping fine. Honestly, you two worry too much.”

He finishes his drink and Fandral and Sif remain unconvinced, but Thor feels no guilt over it. They do not know or need to know about flickering visions and dreams that make a mockery of his faith.

Anyway, isn’t even a man of the cloth allowed a lie every once in a while? It would seem too much if he were not at least allowed that.

*

**seven.**

How do you counsel patience and faith when the fabric of reality is being rent apart? How do you advise compassion and forgiveness when the truth is as ugly as the lie? What Asgardia needs is peace and what it has gotten, in the meantime, is violence. How to heal that rift, when everyone is as hurt and as angry as they deserve to be?

Thor sits at his desk in the vestry, in the quiet hours of the chapel, the afternoon turning to dusk outside and the windows closed because if he cannot see or smell the Sea, then perhaps the Sea cannot see or reach him. It is a nonsense idea born of paranoia, but Thor leaves for his weekly visit to the bishop and when he comes back, there is a wet handprint pressed to the jamb of his door. 

He swallows his own fear, his worry that he is losing touch with reality, and before he can spend time wondering whether this is why his father became what he became, he taps his pencil against his notepad. 

“There are monsters walking among us in human skin,” Thor says, thinking out loud. “Do we have to look to the fantastic to root out what possible evil has taken hold in the heart of the village?” 

He doesn’t think that will go over very well among his parishioners, so he doesn’t write it down. He does wonder it though. He poses the question to himself and the answer he finds is that sometimes you do not go looking for the fantastic. Sometimes the fantastic finds you. 

“Rubbish,” Thor says, loudly. He crumples the sheet in front of him in frustration and throws it against the closed window. 

The paper bounces off the window pane and Thor suddenly hears a rustling. 

Outside, two crows cry into the darkening air.

  
The truth is that Thor does not have the time to be losing his mind. The village is unstable enough without his own grip on reality loosening in unwanted and unexpected ways. He stands at the front of the room, behind the pulpit, and he feels the tension in the air. It hangs heavily across the room, pronounced in the brows of his parishioners, in the way they sit stiffly, jaws clenched, barely breathing or seeming not to at all. 

“The truth,” Thor says, looking out at them, “is that grief is not easy to bear.” 

This makes one or two of them stir. Rindr is nearly catatonic near the back of the church and the baker has not shown up for weeks, but Jord turns her head from looking out the window to the front and Hermod, who has been angry at Thor for nearly a month, seems to come to attention at last. 

“I know this,” Thor says. “Personally.” 

The room, which had not been loud before, somehow quiets further. Leonard Davies leans forward and Rindr’s eyes flicker. 

“I have experienced loss of the most acute nature,” Thor says. “My father, when I was younger. It was a sudden thing, an...unspeakable tragedy. We were not particularly close, my father and I. We fought, as all fathers and sons must. He judged me too harshly and I refused to bend. I think it must be like that for many of us.” 

The room rustles again and this time, more eyes turn to the front. For the first time since Vali’s death, Thor nearly has the attention of the room again. 

“I know what that is like—to be confronted with mortality and, what’s more, to be confronted with it when you’re not ready for it. It’s nonsensical. You think—how could this have happened, to him, to her, to them? How could this have happened to me? Why didn’t someone stop it? Why didn’t _God_ stop it?” 

Thor swallows. It rises quickly in his chest, the complicated, briar patch feelings of him and Odin. He forges on. 

“You think I don’t understand what is happening here, but I do,” he says. “I promise you I do. When my father died, I was hurt. I was angry. I was so out of my mind with this complicated, tangled grief that I felt as though I was losing my mind. It does that to you—grief. It makes you feel as though the ground is falling away beneath your feet. It makes reality feel—unreal. The world feels less solid, as though you could fall through it entirely.” 

Thor takes a sharp, deep breath. He hears a sniffle coming from his parishioners. Then another. 

“To feel that hopeless, that adrift—you will cling to anything. You will believe and disbelieve anything,” he says. “Some will find faith and some will drift away from it. For me it was the former. I thought—if I cannot control this reality, then let me trust someone who can.” 

He feels as though he’s dissociating—his words separating in front of him, his parishioners, watching, the ghost of his father, standing in the doorway. On the roof, two crows caw, and outside, the Sea rifles through the air. 

The village has been through a tragedy and another and it stands on the precipice of breaking—but so does Thor. 

He looks at Rindr, and beside her, the ghost of Vali. Beside him, the ghosts of Frey and Frey and the taller ghost of the baker’s daughter. 

Next to him, at the pulpit, Odin stands, an eyepatch over one eye. 

“ _You have made monsters of us all, son,_ ” he says.

Thor’s head spins and his voice hardens. 

“But there is a difference,” he says. “Between reality and the false. You can carry your grief, you can bear the burden of it, without turning to myths and false stories.” 

A ripple goes through the room. 

“ _Now this is interesting_ ,” Odin says from the front row. 

“You must stop this now,” Thor says, his voice growing louder. “Fake monsters—sea creatures that go bump in the night. These stories help no one. They are false. They are _fake_.” 

The ripple is that of anger. It grows louder, the rustling suddenly ticking up. 

“ _You are losing them_ ,” Odin grins and his face is marred by a scar running down his face, something he got in the war. “ _I should not be surprised._ ”

“There is no _sea monster_ taking children in the middle of the night,” Thor says, louder. The anger in the room is so palpable now, so loud, that he has to nearly shout to be heard over it. “Stop these lies! Stop these rumors! _There is no monster, there is only the Sea_ —” 

The anger in the room—the swirling, rising, bubbling fury—steeply peaks; and then it snaps. 

“ _Stop_!” Rindr gets up, shrieking. She covers her ears with her hands, closing her eyes. “ _Stop! Stop!_ ”

Someone howls with unspoken grief and Rindr’s shrieks grow louder. 

“ _Stop!_ ” she continues screaming. “ _Stop, stop, stop!_ ”

She sinks to her knees, clawing at her face, and two, three parishioners grasp her arms, try to pull her to her feet as she struggles to break free.

Children begin crying—howling—and Borr stands up in his pew, bellows, “That’s _enough_ , Father!”

“ _Listen to me_ ,” Thor tries, but his words sink into the cacophony, unheard and feckless.

He diminishes and the villagers grow louder, angrier. 

_That’s enough_ , they shout. _Enough!_

He loses them, then—his flock, his parishioners. 

They stand, an angry, insulted, buzzing mass, some shrieking, some shouting, all saying the same thing, the only thing, over and over and over again—sea monsters and sea creatures and the heart of the Sea, come to life, its claws digging into the Earth and scraping Asgardia back into the water. 

The heat roils, visceral and upending, and it beats back against him, pushes Thor back against the wall and out the door, until he’s running out of the chapel and down the hill, out to Sea, his broken flock and scattered Faith left behind. 

  
He skids to the bottom, stumbles over his own feet and crashes into the water, his own anger at the surface, hot and spiking, his blood boiling with venom and his mouth spitting poison and Odin is gone, but his disdain remains, a heavy, disappointing, bitter thing, weighing Thor down, down, down, until he nearly drowns under the weight of it. 

“ _Are you happy!_ ” Thor shouts— _screams_ —at the Sea. “ _Is this what you wanted? Are you pleased? You have taken my father from me and now my village too?_ ” 

The wind whips around him, bitter cold and furious, the air digging under his cassock, needles and knives burrowing into his cold skin. His teeth chatter and he ignores them. He’s on the edge of something, so close to a point so precipitous, he knows that when he falls there will be no surviving the landing. 

“ _Why can’t you leave us alone?_ ” Thor cries, louder. He digs the palms of his hands into his eyes and the waves crash into his knees, cold and furious, sharp rocks and slick pebbles swirling around his ankles. “ _Are you happy?_ ” 

He feels it rise in him: the anger, the desperation, the out-of-his-mind need to control that which he has lost all control of. 

It crashes over him like the water does and when he splutters awake, it’s to a sob cresting and breaking in his chest. 

“Why couldn’t you _leave me alone_?” he asks. 

The wind shifts against him, around him, like a hand smoothing over the wrinkles in his clothes. 

From the middle, in the shell of his ears, he hears a voice like a rock worn smooth by the tide of the sea. 

“Is that what you want?” the creature asks. “Do you want me to leave you alone?”


	3. III.

**eight.**

He rises from the waves, as though made from foam and water. He is blue skin, the cool color of the sky in late winter, just before the coming of spring. He has dark blue lips and eyes that are a deep navy before they flicker green and then back again. He has ridges raised on his arms and at the base of his stomach, like the tide carved into his skin. His hair is dark, long waves that curl loosely at the top of his shoulders, the wet strands clinging to the curves before dipping down the middle of his back. 

He looks human enough, or the thought of what a human could be, as though crafted from a distant, low-lit memory, but with a touch of beauty so surreal it’s nearly alien. The creature glows in the pale light of the day, which has dimmed considerably, as though the clouds have knit together to provide this dream a cast of shade. Thor feels the rocks beneath his feet and the world shifts around him, the colors dimmer and brighter, his reality an unstable, warping, physical dissonance. 

The creature stares at him, unblinkingly, and looks every bit as he did in Thor’s dream, with a more urgent vibrancy, somehow, as though the Sea has reached into the night and managed to breathe him to life. It shocks Thor, rends him apart, at the same time it grounds him, pieces him stitch by stitch back together. The water calms around his thighs and he realizes he’s cold and trembling, although he could not quite say why. 

“Is that what you want?” the creature asks again. The question slides between them, sitting lightly in the air, and nesting in the hollow under Thor’s ribs. 

“You’re not,” Thor says, his voice quiet, upset, almost guttural. “You can’t be—” 

The creature tilts his head and Thor seems to choke on the motion. 

“This is a dream,” Thor says. “This can’t be real.”

The creature says nothing. It reverberates so loudly in the space between them that Thor clasps his hands over ears tightly and stumbles back. 

“I’m losing what’s left of my mind,” he says. 

“Is that easier for you?” the creature asks and that doesn’t make it any better. “To be mad?”

Thor shakes his head and forces himself back against the water, trying to put distance between the two, but his feet catch on sharp rocks and he hisses as his left shin is cut open, the water turning dark red around him. The creature flickers then, its eyes shifting between navy and green to a deep, blood red, before flickering back again. He licks his lips and Thor, horrified, tries to move farther back. This time, the water forms a wall behind him that he slams into in his haste, gasping, as its wet fingers grasp tight around his legs and back, holding him in place. 

“Why do you run?” the creature asks quietly. 

“Why are you here?” Thor asks, spits out really. “What do you want?” 

The creature pauses, his eyes flickering, his body glittering in the sudden moonlight of the middle of the day. 

“I thought that was obvious,” the creature says. 

“You cannot—” Thor says. His heart thuds in his chest quickly, sharply, but he swallows the pain and eats his fear to summon as much courage as is left to him. “You cannot have any more of our children. You have had _enough_.” 

“Children?” the creature tilts his head slightly.

“You mock me?” Thor asks, anger pooling in the pit of his stomach. 

“No,” the creature says. He turns into a navy blue smoke and then materializes right in front of Thor. “I’m not here for children.”

Thor falters, nervous and uncertain. “You cannot have them. They are ours.” 

The creature smiles then, a bright, terrible, white smile. 

“Oh, I do not care about them, Thor,” the creature says. “I’ve come here for you.”

  
The silence between them is the sound of water moving around their hips, the soft slosh of waves pulled by the tide and washing up against the hard shore. 

“Why do you pretend you don’t know me?” the creature says when Thor says nothing. A frown tugs at his lips, his blue mouth turned down, ever so slightly. It’s devastating; it’s lovely.

The creature reaches forward and Thor, bound by the water, cannot move when the hand touches his face. 

“I don’t know you,” Thor says, growing angrier. “Release me.” 

“You know me,” the creature says, softly. His words, like a rustle against Thor’s skin, buffet him, warm and humid. “You know my name.” 

“I do not,” Thor says, louder. “ _Release me_.” 

The creature looks puzzled. 

“But,” he says, cool, wet fingers still pressed to Thor’s face. “I gave it to you.” 

That makes Thor pause, his body suddenly stock-still where he’s held. 

“You what?”

“I gave it to you,” the creature says—insists. His fingers curl into Thor’s jaw. “I do not give my name to anyone.” 

“You gave me your name?” Thor swallows. It’s a question and it isn’t. 

The creature strokes his face and Thor swallows again, his body suddenly hot, his skin burning at the touch. 

“You asked me,” the creature says. “And I told you.” 

The word is on Thor’s tongue, as foreign and familiar to him as his name in this moment. He remembers, as though it had happened just now; as though it had happened at all. 

“Loki,” he says.

Loki smiles, brightening under the midday moon. 

“See?” Loki says. “I gave it to you.” 

He leans forward and kisses Thor.

  
It is nothing like it was in his dream, Loki’s mouth cool against his, the kiss gentle, even hesitant, like water sliding softly over his skin. Thor gasps into it and when Loki’s grip tightens, imperceptibly, he leans forward, kissing him back. It’s a moment of confused, almost hungry want—need, even—and not of thought, which only occurs to Thor after his mind comes back to life and he finds himself looking into bright green eyes. 

He gasps again and forces himself back, his heart thundering in his chest, his head aching a little in a way he can’t quite grapple. 

“Release me,” Thor says again, although he does not sound as confident as he had before. 

The creature—Loki—watches him carefully and Thor takes pains to ignore what he sees as an expression so sad it cuts to the bone of him. The water relents then, the wall crumbling and washing away out to sea. 

Thor is left swaying on his feet and he would fall again, but for the hand on his shoulder. 

“Is that what you want?” Loki asks him. He looks into Thor’s eyes and Thor fights the desire to shut them, to look up and away, anywhere but into the face of the creature watching him. “Is this what you want?” 

“Stop asking me that,” Thor rasps and shoves Loki away from him. “Yes.”   
  
Loki releases him altogether.

“Why do you run?” Loki asks again, sounding hurt. 

“You’re not real,” Thor says. “You’re a part of my mind.” 

Loki tilts his head, the moonlight making his brow glitter. It slides off his cool blue shoulders, makes him phosphorescent in the dark around them. He sucks the atmosphere in around him, bending color and time, reality wavering at the edges of his outline. Thor presses his palms into his eyes, trying to rub him away, but he only manages to sharpen his headache for his efforts. Loki remains, head cocked, watching, considering.

He says nothing for a moment and then his expression melts into something soft and indiscernible.

“You do not remember,” Loki says. 

That makes Thor pause, his hands up near his face. 

“Remember,” he says. “Remember what?” 

Slowly, so slowly Thor doesn’t realize until he’s in front of him again, Loki moves with the water. He lifts his hands to Thor’s face again and this time Thor is so caught off guard, he doesn't even try to flinch away. Instead, Loki curls his fingers into Thor’s hands and lowers them away from his face. 

Their fingers tangle together and Thor feels the pull of it, something that draws him closer to Loki, a magnetic, inexorable, impossible thing. 

His heart resounds somewhere in his ears, his nerves pulled taut, like guitar strings. 

“Remember what?” Thor asks again and then, throat dry, “—Loki?” 

Loki brightens again then, his blue shining brighter and brighter, until Thor’s eyes press shut against the blinding light. 

Thor feels a mouth against his again, a kiss pressed firm to his lips, and then a whisper in his ear. 

“You will,” Loki says. “I promise.” 

When Thor manages to open his eyes again, he’s standing in the calm, still water, his cassock waterlogged, the air around him cool and the sun above him bright.

*

**nine.**

He has dreams after; bright, violent, beautiful dreams of rooms dappled in sunlight blue and green eyes he can’t quite catch. He sees Loki swimming in front of him and he reaches out, pale fingers streaming through the water, but he’s always just out of reach, the blue of his wrist just inches beyond Thor’s fingertips. 

It upsets him, a hurt that nestles deep in his chest until he bleeds water from a wound he didn’t realize was being rent from the center of his chest. He clutches at the point he bleeds, fingers scrabbling to close the wound, but it’s too slick and his palm can’t catch the blood and the hole grows larger and larger, until it swallows him entirely. 

  
He wakes up some nights, sweating, his palms wet and his legs trembling. His chest aches and it becomes difficult to breathe, his breath stalling somewhere low in his lungs. 

He drinks water and drinks water and can’t seem to quench his thirst. 

When he rubs the sleep from his eyes, Loki is nowhere to be seen, although Thor is certain—was certain, had been certain—he had been there just a moment before, sitting at the foot of his bed, waiting.

  
He doesn’t know what is vision and what is dream anymore. 

He wakes up with his wrist burning and he doesn’t know what is memory either.

  
He calls Frigga and asks for advice, just once.

“I think I’m losing my mind,” he rasps to her in the middle of the night. 

Loki’s eyes glimmer at him through the dark. 

“You have visions in your blood, Thor,” Frigga says, as kindly as she can manage.

He blinks and Loki disappears. 

Thor’s fingers curl into his sheets. 

“I am not,” he says. “This isn’t—”

Frigga waits for him to continue, but Thor is watching Loki, tracing the back of Thor’s hand with his ice blue fingernails. Loki looks curious. 

He raises his palm and Thor sucks in a breath, his heartbeat rattling in his ears. 

“The best way to rid yourself of visions,” Frigga says, quietly, “is to listen to them.”

Thor raises his palm to Loki’s. They press together, Thor’s fingers thick where Loki’s are thin, his palm wide where Loki’s is narrow. 

He feels the coolness under his skin. He feels Loki’s heartbeat in his own chest, slow and steady, like the pull of the low tide. 

“I’m not,” Thor says. “I’m not a witch. I’m a priest.”

Loki curls his fingers through Thor’s own with a soft, shy smile. It lodges somewhere in Thor’s chest, unfurling sweetly, like a flower blossom in the middle of the night.

“The lines are not so distinct as you think they are,” Frigga says.

Thor says nothing to that, his breathing growing a little more ragged as Loki lifts his legs onto Thor’s bed. He crawls toward him and Thor has to try to control his quickening breath, the way his muscles suddenly ache. His chest shudders under the weight of a want so keen Thor has to swallow to tamp it back down. 

“See what they have to say,” Frigga says softly. “Visions are not malevolent. They just have a story they need to share.”

Thor hangs up and then it’s just the two of them, wide-eyed and quiet. 

“What do you have to say?” Thor asks the vision quietly. 

Loki crawls forward, his knees bumping into Thor’s thighs. 

“What do you want from me?” Thor asks, almost desperate.

Loki frames his face and kisses him again, sweet, cold, and full of longing. 

  
“You’re looking a bit peaky,” Fandral says. He gives Thor a critical once over. “If I’m going to be honest.”

“I didn’t ask you to be,” Thor says, gruffly. He hears Odin in his voice and he can’t do anything to help it.

“You’re coming on his anniversary,” Sif says over her drink. “You always get weird around this time.”

“I think this goes beyond weird,” Fandral says and puts a hand on Thor’s shoulder, as though comforting him. “Truly, are you well, Thor?”

Thor does not have the bandwidth to answer that question. He is not of the mind to tell his best friends that he can’t sleep because the vision of the Sea keeps coming to him, night after night. He doesn’t know how to tell them that he doesn’t stop it, doesn’t think he can stop it, doesn’t know if he wants to stop it. 

He wakes up in the morning, remembering his vows. But in the middle of the night, with Loki in his bed, he can’t recall them. He can only feel Loki’s cool hands against his face, his mouth against his mouth. 

He’s going mad.

He probably should tell his friends.

“Have you gone to his grave?” Sif asks then. 

Thor pauses mid-drink. 

“It’s been years,” she says. “You told me so yourself, Thor.”

Thor cannot help it then. He knows, somewhere inside, that his friends only care, that they want to help; that they love him. He knows, somewhere, he should reach for forgiveness.

He finds himself at odds with what he knows, these days.

So he grows angry, that burning heat in his stomach spiking hot to touch. He drains his ale and gets up, abruptly. 

“It’s empty,” he says loudly, bitterly. “There is no grave for you when you walk into the ocean.”

He walks out angrily, leaving Sif and Fandral staring after him.

  
“Why are you here?” Thor asks, that night. 

Loki is in his arms, his bare, blue arms curved around Thor’s broad shoulders, his bare chest pressed against Thor’s thinly clothed one. 

Loki kisses along Thor’s jaw and Thor’s breath catches at the sensation, stuttering like the air keeps catching in the grooves of his lungs. 

Loki pauses at the back of Thor’s jaw and Thor’s chest lurches, something twisting terribly inside as he buries his face into the space between Loki’s shoulder and his neck. 

“Do you not want me to be?” Loki asks. 

He doesn’t often talk, but when he does, it soothes Thor at the same time it terrifies him. It feels like an anchor; grounding him here and pulling him down to the ocean floor.

“That isn’t what I said,” Thor replies. It’s not what he should say, but it is as honest as he can be. 

“You ask me to be here,” Loki says. He strokes the back of Thor’s head, his nails scratching against the base of Thor’s skull. 

Thor’s voice rumbles in his chest, low and pleased. 

“When?”

Loki says nothing and presses a kiss to his temple. 

“You ask me to be here,” Loki says, quietly. “So I come.”  
  
Thor doesn’t remember that; asking that.

But then, he doesn’t remember a lot of things these days.

  
“Are you real?” Thor asks. His fingers skim down Loki’s torso and he _feels_ real. Thor touches the smooth skin pulled taut over a body so tight, he can feel the muscles ripple underneath every time Loki shifts. He presses his fingertips into the rise and fall of his muscles, in the space between divots and hard, raised ridges. 

Thor brushes his thumb over the sharp corner of Loki’s hip bone and Loki lets out a soft, pleased sound that punches Thor somewhere near his gut. He does it again and Loki squirms under his touch, Thor’s palm spanning one hip and the fingers of his other hand pressing into the other side. 

“What is real?” Loki asks. 

Thor’s head is muddy with this—whatever this is—not the hot, heady feeling of it, but the vitality of the vision, how Loki is a myth, but he is all hard planes and real flesh under Thor’s hands. He can smell salt water on Loki’s skin and when he goes to kiss Loki’s side, he tastes salt water on his tongue as well. 

“Is this real?” Loki asks, looking up at him. 

Thor, now hovering over him, not sure what he’s doing, but unable to stop doing it, doesn’t know what to say. 

“You are too worried about that,” Loki laughs and that’s strange for Thor, to hear the Sea rustle so loudly against the insides of his walls. 

“I would say I should be more worried about it,” Thor says darkly and when Loki’s mouth softens into an amused smile, Thor leans down to kiss it. 

“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” Loki says and winds his legs around Thor’s waist. 

“What doesn’t?” Thor asks. 

Loki lopes an arm around Thor’s neck and draws him closer and closer. 

“What is real,” he says. He frames Thor’s face with a hand that feels like a breeze against his jaw and looks into his eyes. “And what isn’t.” 

When they kiss again, Thor forgets what he’s asked and, shortly before he falls asleep, alone, forgets what he’s seen at all.  
  


Later, when Thor looks down at his hands, he finds he can’t see them anymore. Where his broad, pale fingers used to be, he sees only roots, growing slowly, steadily, twisting from the base of his wrist. 

He blinks, his heart beating rapidly. There is a fear here; a creeping, overwhelming, tangled sensation that starts at the pit of his stomach and winds up his limbs until he is frozen with it, paralyzed in place. 

He looks at his roots and they remind him of trees that break ground and grow deeper and deeper, lodging into the soft dirt under water. 

  
Eventually, his pale, human hands return to him. But it takes some time to do so, as though they don’t really want to. 

As though they are not his at all, and belong to something else now. 

*

**ten.**

He’s sitting in the pews, stretched thin and restless when he feels someone slide into the seat next to him. Thor has rosary beads wrapped around his wrist. He tries to remember the prayers to go with them, but his mouth moves in ways his brain can’t quite catch up to. The movement is pure muscle memory, words he doesn’t register but mouths because he has mouthed them so many times before they have taken a kind of life of their own. Perhaps that should be of comfort to him, but when Heimdall puts a warm, rough hand against his shoulder, Thor feels like scattered sunlight under his touch. 

“Far be it from me to tell you how to conduct your affairs, Father,” Heimdall says, “but it does not seem as though you have been doing your job.” 

It’s not as though Sunday Mass has been popular since Thor told the villagers their hysteria was false, but there are still those who believe strongly in the Faith and Thor cannot remember what he’s said to them or if it even made sense. 

“I was here last Sunday,” Heimdall says, kindly. “Your mother has been...worried.” 

Thor frowns at that and clutches the rosary more tightly in his hand. The wooden beads dig into his palm. 

“I can’t say I blame her,” Heimdall says. “You don’t look well, Thor. If I’m being honest, you don’t sound well, either.” 

Thor looks up at the altar and mouths more prayers. They ring hollow in the quiet of his head, so he shakes it and tries to re-focus. 

Heimdall’s hand tightens on his shoulder. 

“Your sermon,” he says. “It was...not exactly coherent.” 

Thor’s eyes flutter, confusion pressing in between his brows. 

“I spoke of...life,” he says. He licks his lips, which are suddenly dry. “What it means. What it means to...give it up.” 

“That was...part of it,” Heimdall agrees, hesitantly. 

“And memory,” Thor says. “I remember saying something about memory.” 

“Aye,” Heimdall agrees again. “You said memory was what we imagined it to be, and nothing truer.” 

“I said that?” Thor frowns. He raises the rosary beads to his mouth, kisses them, and lowers them again. “What does that mean?” 

Heimdall can’t quite hide how worried he looks, but his expression smooths out as much as it can. 

“You tell me,” he says.

Thor tilts his head, trying to think. It’s harder to think now than he remembers it being. His head aches, as though he’s not getting enough oxygen.

“I don’t know,” he says. He looks down at his hands and he sees them again—the roots, branching out from his fingers, or where his fingers need to be. His breath catches in his throat, tight and horrified. “I don’t know what’s happening to me, old friend.” 

Heimdall’s grip tightens so much, Thor winces from the pain. Then he gets up. 

“Come,” he says. “Let’s go to the tavern. We’ll have a drink and some food. And then.” 

Thor looks up at him.

“And then?” 

Heimdall’s molten eyes flash in the dark of the chapel. 

“And then you will tell me what’s going on.” 

  
The tavern is brighter than Thor remembers it being. He shields his eyes as the two of them duck in through the door and he feels false all of a sudden, the bottom hem of his cassock catching against the wooden floor. He has a cross around his throat and the rosary beads wound around his wrist, but he feels anything but what he was ordained to do. 

“Come on,” Heimdall mutters, a hand to Thor’s elbow. He leads him past tables and booths near the front to one at the very back, nearly hidden from view and darker than the rest of the tavern. 

Thor sits and waits for Heimdall to return with their drinks. He scrubs his hands over his face and feels so tired, so overwrought, he thinks he’s tearing at the seams. 

It’s only a few minutes, but by the time Heimdall returns with their tankards of ale, Thor is staring at the seat opposite him, with bright, almost wild eyes. 

Heimdall takes the seat and says nothing for two whole, nearly oppressive minutes. Then he drinks and turns his full attention toward Thor. 

“Tell me,” Heimdall says. “What you have been seeing.” 

  
If it had been anyone else or if Thor had been feeling even close to like himself, perhaps he would not have said anything. He has always held secrets close to his chest, where he’s had secrets at all. But faced with this—his slow descent into madness—and his oldest friend staring at him gently, almost admonishingly—as though he’s the only touchstone left to Thor in this world—he unravels in front of him. 

He leaves his ale untouched and, instead, starts at the beginning. 

  
He tells Heimdall everything—he leaves nothing out. 

Heimdall listens to him, quiet and assured, neither judging nor offering commentary. 

When Thor finishes, when he offers Heimdall his hand to check for tree and sea roots, Heimdall takes Thor’s hand and curls Thor’s fingers into his palm. 

“You need to be careful when dealing with spirits,” he says. His voice, smooth like honey, sinks into Thor, warming him in places he hadn’t realized he was shaking from the cold. 

“Spirits?” Thor asks, sluggishly. 

“Whatever Loki is, he isn’t real, Thor,” Heimdall says. “If you give him your reality, he will take it from you.” 

Thor tries to shake his head and finds himself too tired to do so. His eyes ache. His lungs hurt for water. 

“He’s not,” Thor says and stops. He tries again. “He’s not dangerous.” 

“How do you know?” Heimdall asks, a little harsher. “You don’t know who he is. You don’t know what he is. He is in your bed every night, tempting you to break your vows, leeching off of what you’re willing to give him. He’s dangerous, Thor.” 

That makes Thor angry. 

He couldn’t say why, only that he thinks of Loki and it curls through his chest, a protective instinct so visceral he nearly cracks the glass he’s holding. 

“What is he to you?” Heimdall asks. “ _What_ is he?” 

Thor lets go of the glass and stares at his hands, at the blue sheen of it. When he looks up at Heimdall, he is disappointed, for the first time in his life, to see it is only Heimdall. 

“Heimdall,” Thor says, in a rasp. His throat is dry again. “Old friend.” 

“Thor,” Heimdall says, warily. 

Thor looks at him then, his old friend, his best companion. 

“I am ready,” Thor says, taking a breath. “Tell me of the time I drowned.” 

  
The difference between dream and memory is as thin as reality and what lies beyond it. 

When Thor opens his eyes, he is a child, long-limbed and golden-haired, missing two teeth in the front of his mouth. In front of him is the river and behind him is rocky sand and his mother and father, paying attention to something else. 

He is old enough to swim and he wants to swim, so he does not think much of it before running barefoot across the pebbles and straight into the mouth of the river. 

  
The water covers his head.

Thor twists underneath, the cold grasping at his arms, needles digging into his legs. His trousers, waterlogged, grow heavy and drag him down underneath, until his feet tangle with something he can’t free himself from. 

Thor tries to shout—he tries to scream out loud, but from his mouth is just a stream of bubbles and inside, water rushes until he’s choking on it. 

He thrashes, twisting, trying to kick his way back up to the surface. 

It grasps him, hands around his arms, around his legs, around his throat, until he’s dipped low, far too low, the water around him green and blue, a film over the world he’s known. He can’t see now and he can’t breathe either and it feels like something’s knocked into his lungs, into his chest. 

He gasps and chokes again, on water so cold it begins to freeze him from the inside out. 

His body temperature dips too, his body cold, so cold, his limbs are heavy, nearly leaden with it.

The world darkens, the edges of his vision spotting. 

He knows then, a knowledge so pinpoint certain, he can shake it no more than he can kick his leg free from its tangles. 

He will die now; here. He will suffocate on the river, on the sea, and die. 

No one will rescue him and one day, they will find him, find his body, cold and bloated. 

One day; but that will not be today and it will not be now. 

For today, Thor Odinson dies. 

  
A hand grasps his wrist.

Thor opens his eyes against the dark, his head aching, his lungs aching. 

In front of him, in the wake of his death, is a small, blue creature. He has dark hair that floats gently around him, skin the color of the early winter sky, and eyes that Thor can’t identify as blue or black, or maybe green. 

The creature, curious and small, swims toward him. 

Thor, small himself, drowning, dying, watches without fear. It is perhaps the first, or only, time in his life. 

The creature tilts its head. 

Then it slides its little blue hands up Thor’s arm. It reaches his face and curls its little blue fingers over Thor’s jaw. 

After a moment of staring, of watching Thor carefully, the creature smiles. 

“Loki,” it says. 

  
That is all Thor remembers before he feels his father’s arms around him. 

  
He comes awake on the shore, spluttering water out of his chest, Odin and Frigga over him, shouting, bringing him back to life. 

“Loki,” is the first word Thor says upon gaining his breath. “ _Loki._ ”

Odin and Frigga don’t know what it means and Thor is too young to explain. 

Soon—too soon—Thor forgets altogether.

  
There is a memory wrapped within a dream wrapped within the reality gathered in the palm of his hands. 

Thor remembers the feel of Loki’s hand on his face just as he remembers the feel of his little blue fingers curled around Thor’s wrist. 

He heaves water out of his lungs and his wrist burns with a mark that he’s had for so long, he can’t remember where he’s gotten it from. He remembers now, though—that’s the thing. 

He remembers Loki, bright-eyed and curious, at the bottom of the river, rescuing him from death. 

  
Memory is a funny thing. He remembers dying, almost dying, being rescued from dying. That unhooks something in the recesses of his mind, a flood of things he has spent years forgetting. 

Thor remembers Loki, saving him.

He also remembers wading out to sea, years later, and finding Odin’s vestments left behind. It was only the water and his clothes; nothing else.

  
“I told you,” Loki smiles at Thor. 

Thor turns his head and finds he’s on the bench, at the top of the hill. He has no memory of walking there, but he is growing used to reality bending around him. 

Loki, next to him, tilts his head up toward the moonlight. He glimmers; he glitters. 

“You would remember,” he says, turning happily to Thor. “I said.” 

Thor swallows a fear so sharp it pricks his inside. It draws blood, or maybe that’s just what fear feels like. 

“This is yours,” Thor says then and offers Loki his wrist. In the skin is burned a mark much like a handprint; a small, delicate one. “You left this.” 

“I have been looking for you,” Loki says. “All this time.” 

Thor shakes his head and feels the weight of it cave in on him. 

“You are afraid,” Loki says. “Do not be afraid of me.”

As thought it could be so simple.

Loki turns to Thor and then, slowly, offers his hand. 

He remembers Heimdall’s warning— _He is dangerous. If you give him your reality, he will take it._

He is tempted anyway.

Loki’s palm shines blue in the light of the moon. 

“What are you afraid of?” Loki asks, softly; oh, so softly. 

Thor doesn’t know. 

“Yes you do,” Loki says. He asks again, “What are you so afraid of, Thor?” 

Thor thinks, then—of his future, of his present, of faith gained and faith broken. He thinks of a village he tries to save and fails. He thinks of failure and what that means. Of a man with one eye and a look of disapproval, no matter what he did, no matter how often he tried. 

He hears his voice in his ears. He remembers the day he left. 

“My father,” Thor says, cracking. He cleaves in two, every piece of him exposed for the night and the Sea both. “I’m afraid of becoming like my father.” 

“Oh,” Loki says. 

They say nothing; the quiet stretching between them, powder soft and unbreakable. 

Loki touches Thor’s shoulder. 

“You will be nothing like him,” he says. “He was afraid of the Sea. Don’t you see? That is why he walked into it.” 

“I am afraid of the Sea,” Thor says. “The Sea nearly drowned me.” 

Loki laughs softly and the sound caresses the back of Thor’s jaw. 

“The Sea did not drown you, Thor,” he says. He touches Thor’s face. “Do you not understand? The Sea saved you.” 

  
When Thor wakes up, his skin feels sticky with cold humidity. He sits up straight, his head hurting, his chest a tangled, aching, hurting mess. 

“Loki?” he asks, but he does not receive an answer.

He tries again.

“Loki?” 

Still, there is only this; the silence and the sound of him breathing. He pulls his knees up to his chest, presses his palms into the hollows of his eyes.

Next to his bed, there is nothing but a puddle of water on the floor. 

Thor lets out a low, hurt sound. 

He wishes, then, in the middle of his cracked, splintering center, that he had taken Loki’s hand when he had the chance. It is too late now.

He is half-realities and half-memories, Thor Odinson. He is half-dreams and splitting hearts, and all of the missed opportunities in between.

*

**eleven.**

November smooths into December and the first dusting of snow falls over Asgardia. It is not normal, but it is not unwelcome either.

The nights come early and stretch long, torches and electricity burning bright inside the village. Eventually, the edges of hysteria smooth over, like it always does. Time is the great healer, the great equalizer, and that is true of a haunted little village along the coast of the Ifing Sea as well. 

What children have been taken remain gone, but the rest remain safe, untouched, tucked into their warm beds on cold, winter nights.

Slowly, the villagers forgive Thor. 

Borr sees Thor in the tavern one evening and buys him a drink. Jord sees how thin he’s gotten and makes him lutefisk and potato dumplings, brings it to his cottage and tells him she is worried; that they are all worried.

Thor smiles at her thinly and tells her she has nothing to be worried about. It is only later that he realizes he had not said her name; that, actually, he could not remember it at all. 

The first Sunday in December, Rindr returns to church. She sits in the last row, her back straight, dressed in black and as willowy as death herself, but she stays and she listens, and after the sermon, she approaches Thor.

“Father,” she says in a voice that will forever be hollow with grief. “Will you say a prayer for Vali?”

Thor swallows the knot in his throat and nods.

“Of course,” he says. “I will say two.”

Rindr looks as though she could blow away in the coastal wind, as though grief has taken more from her than life ever gave her to begin with. But she gives Thor what smile she can and bows her head.

“Thank you, Father,” she says.

It’s thanks Thor doesn’t know he deserves and certainly believes even less.

  
Sif and Fandral forgive Thor his outburst. 

“Think nothing of it,” Fandral says and buys them all a round. “Who among us has not thrown a tantrum in a tavern over drink?”

Thor feels sheepish, but he accepts Fandral and Sif’s grace as he’s been taught to do. 

They drink together, bathing in one another’s companionship and camaraderie, and there’s a lightness among them that does not absolve Thor, but helps him, at least, bear his weight. 

  
He thinks about it over the next week—grace; giving it and accepting it. He talks about it at Mass the following Sunday and when he looks over his parishioners, he only sees what’s there. There is no Odin, there is no Loki. There is only Asgardia, quiet and staring intently back at him. 

Thor breathes a sigh of relief. 

For the first time in months, he feels at peace. 

  
It, of course, was not meant to last.

  
The night Baldur is taken, Thor dreams he’s drowning again. 

This time, there is no sea spirit to rescue him.

He chokes on the water, pulled under by brambles, and when he wakes up, it’s with a shuddering gasp and the knowledge that he’s died.

  
He doesn’t need to hear the cries of anguish to know what’s happened. Somehow, in the heart of him, Thor knows. He knows like he knows his name. He knows like he knows the pulse in his throat, like he knows the concept of faith, of forgiveness, of mercy and grace and hope. 

There is no hope here, he thinks as he hears yet another parent cry, devastated, their life torn clean away from them. 

“This is enough,” Thor says aloud, into the dark. 

They have no more left to give. He, Thor, has no more left to give.

He grabs a torch, wraps his coat around him, and leaves his home. 

  
Thor goes down to the water, angry; aching; heartbroken and heartsick. 

“ _Loki_!” he shouts. “Loki, that is enough! This is enough.”

There is nothing to answer his anger, for a moment. It is him and the open, empty Sea.

“Loki!” he cries again. 

Then the wind stirs, crafting Loki out of water and dream, standing up to his waist in the Sea. He looks as though he has been waiting for Thor all this time. 

“Thor,” he says, voice as the wind. “Why are you so angry?”

“Why am I angry?” Thor spits. He yells, he boils. “You take and you take and you ask why I’m angry.”

Loki tilts his head and Thor bristles. 

“Heimdall was right,” he snaps. The words curl into him, curdle in his throat. “You’re dangerous. You poison us. You poison me.”

Loki says nothing and then, with a rustle of water, offers Thor his hand again. 

“Come with me,” he says. 

Thor stares at the hand, so blue it’s nearly translucent. 

“Why do you refuse?” Loki asks and Thor thinks—he should have an answer for this. There should be something in his gut that is definitive, that isn’t carved out for a want he can’t ignore, that he can’t even deny. 

“I won’t be used by you,” Thor says, unsure. Then, more certainly, “I won’t be manipulated.” 

When Loki lowers his offer, the hurt that crosses his face is only paralleled by the one Thor feels himself. 

“You think I have taken your children,” Loki says softly. 

The river runs between them, a quiet reminder. 

“I know you have,” Thor says, voice like ground up gravel. 

Loki stares at him for a moment that Thor can’t bear. Then he shakes his head.

“I have taken no one, Thor Odinson,” Loki says. “You know this.” 

“No,” Thor rasps. “You have. I know—”

And Thor thinks: does he? 

Loki, so close he could touch, so close he aches to touch him, looks at him as though he knows what Thor does not. He looks at him as though he knows what Thor is too afraid to acknowledge and that it is that—that truth—that keeps him tethered to here.

“Why do you still come to me?” Loki asks, and, softer, “Why do you still ask me to come to you?”

Thor wants to kiss him then. His anger flickers out of him, laying cold in a pool of his own confusion. He lowers his torch, unable to move. 

“What do you want?” Loki asks. “Is it me or is it something else?”

Thor lets the torch fall into the water. He clutches his stomach, as though doubled over from pain. 

“What is your purpose?” Loki asks and Thor shakes his head, because it’s an answer he should know, but he can’t think. Not when Loki is near him, eating at his edges.

“Are you happy, Thor?” Loki asks and it’s this—not anything else, but this—that cuts through to the meat of him. 

“What?” he gasps, his stomach hurting. 

Loki does not move, but he does caress him, the sea breeze against Thor’s cheek. 

“You do not seem it,” Loki says, kindly. “You never seem happy.”

“I’m,” Thor says. He doesn’t finish his thought. 

The thing is, it’s difficult to lie, when the question is so baldly put. There is nowhere to hide, no shadows or barriers between them, no veil between the patient look on Loki’s face and Thor, the heart of him, having heard and needing to answer.

Because maybe the truth is that he isn’t. 

Perhaps Faith isn’t anything like he thought it was, neither the salvation nor the answer he needed. It had brought him peace, but only for a while, and it did not teach him the thing he craved the most. Because the truth is that nothing will change that day, nothing will wind back the clock and erase the horror, the cracking, breaking, shattering trauma of finding his father’s clothes, his sodden vest, the chance for acceptance—or absolution—long gone. 

It is not the duty of faith to always be happy and that is fine, but that leaves the truth, for him, to see in broad, clear moonlight. 

That he, Thor, isn’t happy. 

That he hasn’t been, in a very long time. 

“Why did you save me?” Thor asks. He looks at the roots of his hands, at his lifeline splintering into branches. “Why didn’t you let me drown?”

Loki wraps his arms around him, his face tucked into Thor’s neck. Thor’s cross burns bright between them, but Loki is no demon, so he touches it, reverent, and then touches Thor’s mouth, like a prayer.

“You did not want to,” Loki says. He touched Thor’s eye. “You wanted to live, so I gave you life.”

Thor meets his mouth then, a salve against the bottomless pit of his need, hot and hungry, the kiss desperate and searching. Loki lets him in, fingers touching Thor’s hairline, his mouth soft and pliant. Thor sighs against it, against the way Loki bends against him, against the way they mold into one another. If Thor’s looking for absolution, he won’t find it here.

If he’s looking for something else, though, something higher, something more—then, that he will find. Loki will help him search and together, they will find an answer.

  
Thor takes Loki in his arms and sets him down on the ground, nimble feet first. They disentangle, but Thor doesn’t let him go too far. Loki follows close behind, out of the water, up the hill and across the stone path. 

He waits at the cottage door for Thor to open it. 

He waits inside for Thor to close it. 

And then, when they’ve reached the bedroom, he waits for Thor to slide out of his cassock. He brushes Thor’s hands out of the way, unbuttoning his shirt and his pants, and Thor, out of excuses, lets him. 

When Loki touches the cross at Thor’s neck again, Thor lets him trace it slowly, curiously. He gives Loki that piece of him and when Loki tugs at it, Thor lifts it up and over his head, pressing it to Loki’s palm. 

Loki turns it over in his hand delicately, as though afraid he will break it, nails catching into wooden grooves. After a moment, he kisses it and sets it down. He kisses Thor with that same mouth, his hands at Thor’s warm chest, moving him backwards until Thor’s legs hit the edge of the bed. 

Thor lowers himself down and Loki, not hesitating, climbs over him. 

*

**twelve.**

It is the strangest thing, waking from a dream. It lingers in a way that nightmares often do not, blurring the edges of realities between one beat and the next. 

Thor opens his eyes to sunlight flickering in on a cool, December morning. His head feels light, as though stuffed with cotton, although his limbs feel warm and heavy. If he was in the middle of a good dream, he couldn’t say, only that it doesn’t entirely feel like he’s woken up either. The colors above him blur brighter and when he turns his head, it’s happily, expecting absolution from his loneliness and finding—

Nothing. 

The bed is empty next to him, not a dent to indicate anyone had been there at all. 

Thor is startled to find how cold it is and it’s only then that his dream bleeds away and he sits up in bed. He looks down at his hands and finds them pale, human hands. The mark on his wrist is silent, and although he’s wearing nothing, his body bears no marks that anyone had had it before. 

That should be his saving grace, the final hail Mary; a sign that he should leave monsters in the middle of the night and let his Faith forgive what transgressions he was too human to not make. Perhaps in another life, Thor would be strong enough to do that. 

In this life, he realizes it’s too hard. 

In this life, he realizes he’s too tired. 

He wakes up, alone in bed, with the same, heavy memories he went to bed with and what he finds is that he no longer wants to bear them; on his own or otherwise. He is tired of looking out onto his flock, searching for a piece of him that he had lost long ago. The truth is that when Thor preaches of grace and of faith, of forgiveness and the unbearable weight of mortality, he sees Odin staring back at him, with his single eye narrowed, the ghost of someone who will never grant Thor the peace or the acceptance he seeks. 

Odin is gone—long gone—and with him, any chance of forgiveness. 

Not Odin’s forgiveness of Thor, but the other way around. 

_I forgive you_ , Thor has sought to say to his father, through his Faith, all of these years. He has never been able to and, he thinks, even if he did, his father would not care. 

And maybe that is the point of this all—that Thor has been searching for something he will never find. And it is the search, not the inevitability, that has left him so unhappy even the Sea has noticed. 

So Thor gets out of bed, his heart tucked under his breast, feeling a growing ache there so sharp he stops to hold it. In this life, he has shared only the parts of himself he thought it safe to share. Lately, he has found parts of himself that he had kept hidden, even from himself. It is not the myth of the Sea, but the call of it, that stirs his blood. 

He sits at the edge of the bed, fingers pressed to the spot just above his heart, and he misses Loki; a blood-deep, longing kind of ache. 

He thinks: if this is madness, then he is fully mad. 

That is for someone else to decide. 

For Thor, it is only a matter of wondering who he used to be then and who he is interested in becoming now. 

  
When Thor steps out from his cottage, he finds a village not in mourning, but dazed in sunlight. For the first time in months, Asgardia feels the warmth of the sun above, the buttery yellow shining off of slick roof shingles and stones in the pathways that catch the sheen from above. 

The villagers are out of their doors, standing in their desolate gardens, wonder on their faces. 

Thor thinks he understands then, what Loki has offered him. 

  
“Father,” Borr says, stopping Thor halfway into the village. 

“Borr,” Thor says, inclining his head. 

“I want to apologize,” Borr says, hat in his hands. He looks up at the sun and Thor finds the light shining gently on his grey brows. “You were right, Father. We weren’t thinking straight at all.” 

“Borr?” Thor asks, confused. 

“They found them,” Borr says, blinking in surprise. “The children. Two towns over.” 

“They found the children?” Thor says, slowly. 

“You did not know?” Borr asks and Thor shakes his head. “It happened in the middle of the night. They were found safe, if wet.” 

Thor’s heart quickens. 

“What happened to them?” he asks. “How did they get there? What did they say?” 

Borr shakes his head and this time he looks slightly more troubled, if still mostly serene.

“It is the strangest thing,” Borr says. “They could not remember a thing.” 

Thor swallows and feels the ground shift under his feet, like the roll of gentle waves. 

“I think you were right, Father,” Borr says, shaking his head. “We were all—it was hysteria. There is nothing out to Sea, but the sea itself. There are no creatures in the night. It was madness. We were foolish.” 

Thor feels hollow with it; this space in reality with nothing so fantastical as memory loss. 

“Who are we to say what lives in the night?” Thor says, quietly. “Or what becomes of the Sea when we do not watch?” 

“Father?” Borr looks confused and Thor shakes his head. 

“Maybe the Sea gave them back because it is waiting for someone else,” he says. 

Borr looks over the hill, down toward the water. 

“Who is she waiting for, then?” Borr asks. 

Thor swallows, wondering the same thing. His heart ticks up again, slow and painful, just under his ribs. 

“Someone who wants her,” Thor says, and turns town the path into the village.

  
Thor stops in front of a shop just before the tavern. In the window, he sees his reflection—pale, sad, and reckless. His hair is loose about his shoulders, his cassock hanging open, his collar unbuttoned. Thor’s eyes are wide and wild, the blue of the clear sky, the blue of the roiling sea. He curls his fingers into a fist and it’s only then that he notices he’s missing the cross at his throat. He thinks back to when he dressed and can’t remember seeing it anywhere. He has never forgotten his cross before. Then again, he has never given it to anyone either.

Thor doesn’t see Loki in the mirror, but he does remember him, the cross in his hand, the way he had reverentially raised it to his lips before setting it to the side. 

Perhaps Thor has no token of Loki to remember him by, but he cannot say the same of Loki. 

He doesn’t know how that makes him feel; only that there is a sharp tug under his collarbone and he thinks it’s not so much want as anticipation. He watches his reflection and that Thor watches him back, wondering, curiously, what choice he might make. 

If it will be a choice of Faith or something larger than that. 

He has no answer for that Thor or any other one that might watch him balefully. He has no answers at all.

He walks past his reflection and into the tavern. 

  
Heimdall watches him over a half-finished breakfast platter and a mug of ale that he’s barely touched. For Thor’s part, he finds it difficult to eat. He finds it difficult to concentrate on anything, really. 

Thor runs a finger over the rim of his own glass and says nothing for long enough that when Heimdall speak, it startles him. 

“We are losing you,” he says. 

Thor, who thinks he has been doing a more or less fine job of being present, sucks in a breath through his teeth.

“I am here,” he says, his voice hollow. 

“You have not been here in some time,” Heimdall says. “Do you think we can’t see you, Thor?” 

Thor shakes his head and looks up. He doesn’t know if he’s apologetic or simply confused. 

“Where would I go, Heimdall?” Thor asks. “I am here, I am bound.” 

An expression flickers across Heimdall’s face—something in between concern and resignation. He looks, for a moment, as though he understands, as though he has been waiting for this. The expression doesn’t catch and when Thor looks at him, he sees the white of Heimdall’s eyes. 

“Do you want to be?” Heimdall asks, slowly. 

“What?” Thor says. 

“Do you want to be here?” Heimdall asks again, slower this time. He pushes his glass forward, as though it’s offended him. “You do not have to be, Thor.” 

“I don’t understand,” Thor says. He feels thin, like too much butter spread thin over much too much toast. “Did I do something wrong?” 

Heimdall laughs, a low and sad thing. 

“You are not bound here by anything, old friend,” Heimdall says. “It is your life to decide what to do with.” 

“That’s easier said than done,” Thor says. He runs his fingertips over the wooden booth, his nails catching in the grooves. 

“Is it?” Heimdall says. “Why?”

“What?” Thor frowns.

“Why is it so difficult?” Heimdall asks. 

Thor is slow to answer, sluggish even.

“I have...responsibilities,” he says. “There are expectations.”

Heimdall watches him closely and slowly takes a mouthful of ale. 

“Bullshit,” he says.

Thor, startled, looks up. 

“I have known you all my life,” Heimdall says. “And you have never been good at it.” 

“Good at what?” Thor asks. 

“Lying,” Heimdall says. “To yourself or to anyone else.” 

“I’m not,” Thor struggles to say. “It is the truth.”

“Are you so lost you would make a mockery of the word?” Heimdall asks. He is stern, although not unkind. Still, it cuts at Thor, chops him to his knees. 

“Heimdall,” Thor says, wounded. A frown.

Heimdall’s expression grows stormy before it soothes into something softer; something, perhaps, tired.

“This is about him, isn’t it?” Heimdall says, then. He looks Thor in the eyes. “Loki.” 

Thor isn’t a man to squirm, but he does take in a sharp breath. His head is spinning lightly, the colors of the tavern both too dull and too sharp, like everything is somehow just out of focus.

“I told you he was dangerous,” Heimdall says. “I told you he would steal everything from you.”

“It’s not,” Thor says, throat dry. “It isn’t like that.” 

What it is like, he couldn’t say. He opens his mouth to try, but nothing comes out. 

Perhaps if he could acknowledge the truth of it; what Heimdall has said or even the confusion he feels. He wants to tell Heimdall—it isn’t like that, because Loki hasn’t taken anything from him. Nothing Thor hasn’t given; nothing Thor hasn’t wanted to give. He wants to say, in the same breath—it isn’t like that, because it isn’t like anything. He has a craving he can’t satisfy, but his Faith begs him to try.

And maybe it’s that silence, or the desperate, pleading look in his eyes, that makes Heimdall look at Thor the way he does—as though he finally understands something Thor does not. 

“Go to him,” Heimdall says. 

Thor opens his mouth, his jaw working. He closes it. 

“That is what you want, isn’t it?” Heimdall says. This time his voice softens; his expression does too. 

“Heimdall,” Thor says lowly, shakily, but Heimdall shakes his head. 

“If that is what you want—if that is what you need, Thor, then do not think twice about it. You do not owe it to anyone to stay where you do not want to.”

Thor feels nervous, his limbs almost jerky. He looks up at the wooden slats above him. 

“I am not...unhappy,” he says. He does not sound certain. “I have purpose here.” 

Heimdall is quiet for a moment. 

“Is it me you are trying to convince?” he asks. “Or yourself?” 

It strikes Thor, then, clearly, almost visibly, how this could be a question for nearly any part of himself. Perhaps, he thinks, he has been trying to convince himself this for a very long time.

“And if it is a mistake?” Thor asks Heimdall. 

“Then it is your mistake to make,” Heimdall says. He finishes his drink and puts it back down on the table, a thud as grounding as the man’s presence itself. “Go to him, Thor. I release you—from whatever it is keeping you here. Go. Consider yourself free.” 

  
His phone rings as he steps up the path to his cottage. The wind shifts as he stutters to a stop, the phone vibrating in his pocket. He knows who it is without looking. It sings to him, somewhere in his bones, a knowledge so fine it’s unshakeable. 

“Mother,” Thor says, answering. 

Frigga doesn’t say anything for a minute. Her breath comes as soft puffs over the line and Thor can see her clearly, her red hair in a braid over her shoulder, her green eyes bright in whatever space she finds herself in. Thor loves his mother unconditionally; it is as pure and uncomplicated as it was difficult with Odin. 

He tilts his head up in the silence, feeling as though an anchor is weighing him to the ground. There are two sets of dark, beady eyes staring back at him. The crows, for once, are silent.

“Your father wasn’t a kind man, Thor,” is what Frigga finally says. Her voice is soft, smooth, as though telling him a bedtime story. He thinks, she used to do that, a long time ago, before everything went south. “He came from something terrible and so he grew up to be something terrible. Kindness, empathy—it didn’t come easily to him.” 

Thor watches the crows quietly. They tilt their heads in response.

“He wasn’t unkind with me, but he wasn’t particularly warm either. That’s okay. I didn’t mind, but that was my negotiation to make,” Frigga says. “You didn’t have that chance. You wanted a father who loved you back as uncomplicatedly as you loved him. That is what you deserved. I wish that he could have given that to you.” 

Thor swallows, his stomach heavy, his chest heavy, every part of him—dense with weight.

“He loved you, though,” Frigga says. “It wasn’t an easy love and he didn’t show it in the ways he should have, but I want you to know, he loved you.” 

“Why are you telling me this now, Ma?” Thor asks.

“You aren’t your father,” Frigga says, after a moment. “The truth about Odin is that he had a past he could not shake. It’s not the same for you, darling. I don’t want it to be the same for you.” 

Thor frowns and one of the crows rustles its feathers. 

“Ma?” 

“I’ve seen your future, my love,” Frigga says, softly—so softly it nearly breaks Thor to hear. “Whatever choice you make, know that it is yours to make. Your future is yours to have. It is not the same as the choice Odin made and it never will be.” 

Thor feels his throat grow sticky, his entire body made of dense molasses. He feels the grief of it, then—decades of holding on to a sadness so great it’s nearly drowned him with its weight.

“I love you, Thor,” Frigga says. “No matter where you go, I will always love you.” 

Thor nods, although Frigga cannot see it. He swallows the hot, burning sensation in his throat. 

“I love you,” Thor says. “You did the best you could and I—will always love you for that.” 

It’s not enough to say, but he doesn’t think it could ever be. One day, he hopes, she will understand how much—the magnitude of his gratefulness, the sheer depth of his love.

“Be safe,” Frigga says, sounding watery. “And be free.” 

  
Thor looks around his small home, furnished so sparsely it almost seems as though no one lived there at all. He has his bed, unmade, and his dresser, with only a brush and a Bible on it. He has his bedside table, with a half-finished glass of water, and a notepad with an unfinished sermon scrawled on top. 

Everywhere he looks, Thor sees only a half-life. 

It was always there, for him to see. He had simply never wanted to look.

Thor shakes as he takes off his cassock, but he does not shake as he folds it neatly, sitting it on top of the dresser.

He finds his rosary beads, tucked inside the Bible and he fingers the wooden beads for a minute, feeling their smooth shape against the tips of his fingers. He raises it to his mouth, kisses it, and puts it back down, on top of the Bible this time.

When Thor leaves, he leaves behind everything he had built, every part of him he had come to know about himself. 

He leaves behind his priest’s clothing, his priest’s words, his very Faith. 

He walks toward something else entirely; something unknown, something dangerous and desperate and terribly new. 

Behind him, the two crows watch his retreating back closely. They let out one, long peal and, rustling together, fly off of the cottage roof and into the distance.

*

**one.**

The Ifing Sea never freezes. 

Most days, the Sea sits still and calm, a blue, or grey, or dark black pool of water, reflecting the land back into the sky. 

Today, it is none of these things and all at once. The sun shifts behind a cloud and the Sea shimmers, for a moment, as though covered in glamor. 

Perhaps it is always like this and today, he just does not notice.

Thor comes to a stop at the bottom of the hill, his feet crunching against the soft gravel of the land. 

In front of him, the Sea spreads out as far as he can see—a light, grey, a dark blue, calm as the soft tick of his heart. 

“You did not call for me,” Thor says, quietly. 

In the middle of the water, Loki stares up at him. His skin, as blue as the sky above, glimmers in the false day. 

“I did not,” Loki says. 

“I called for you,” Thor says. 

“You did,” Loki replies. 

Thor doesn’t know what to say to that, so he bends down, untying his shoes. He steps out of them and then, slowly, across the ground and into the water. 

He stops only when he’s in front of Loki, a mere foot away, their breaths as soft as the breeze. 

“How long have you been waiting for me?” Thor asks. 

Loki looks at him quietly, surveying. Then he touches Thor’s shoulder, runs his fingers down Thor’s arm, past the bump of his elbow, to the mark on his wrist. 

“A very long time,” Loki says. 

“Is it enough to say I’m sorry?” Thor asks, watching him. 

His arm tingles; his whole body feels alive. 

“Are you ready now?” Loki asks. His fingers are pressed to Thor’s wrist. He feels Thor’s pulse jump. He smiles.

Thor cups Loki’s face with a large hand and leans in. He kisses him softly, just the once. 

“Take me,” Thor says.

Loki’s smile brightens. He becomes alive; vibrant; as bright as a myth. 

He extends his hand and this time, without hesitation, Thor takes it. 

They walk into the water and Thor doesn’t look back. 

*

They tell a tale, in Asgardia. It is not so old, like the village, nor so new, like villagers. No one quite knows where it comes from and no one quite knows how it finishes. 

It goes like this.

There was once a young priest in Asgardia. He believed in his Faith so deeply, it wrapped around his wrist, like chains to the sky. He spread his Faith then, calmed the hearts of those who did not—or could not—Believe. 

He always prayed to his God, this priest, until, one day, he was swallowed by the Sea. 

No one has heard from him since.

*

**art:** Priest Thor and Loki meeting in the water, at last; **art by:** darkellaine

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so very much for reading. Your thoughts, feelings, keysmashing, comments--would absolutely love to see them!
> 
> And as always, I can be found being super loud and annoying on Twitter at [spacerenegades](https://twitter.com/spacerenegades)! Come join me for a time!
> 
> \+ You can reblog this fic [on Tumblr](https://spacerenegades.tumblr.com/post/189201658078/read-on-ao3) or RT on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/spacerenegades/status/1197267328947359745?s=20) if it suits you!


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